"I see--I see." He felt he really did see.
"He wouldn't hurt her for the world, nor--assuming she marries at all--risk anything that might make against her happiness.
And--willingly, at least--he would never hurt ME." Her face, with what he had by this time grasped, told him more than her words; whether something had come into it, or whether he only read clearer, her whole story--what at least he then took for such--reached out to him from it.

With the initiative she now attributed to Chad it all made a sense, and this sense--a light, a lead, was what had abruptly risen before him.

He wanted, once more, to get off with these things; which was at last made easy, a servant having, for his assistance, on hearing voices in the hall, just come forward.

All that Strether had made out was, while the man opened the door and impersonally waited, summed up in his last word.

"I don't think, you know, Chad will tell me anything." "No--perhaps not yet." "And I won't as yet speak to him." "Ah that's as you'll think best.