Henry James

“ Of course I'm youth—youth for the trip to Europe. I began to be young, or at least to get the benefit of it, the moment I met you at Chester, and that's what has been taking place ever since. I never had the benefit at the proper time, which comes to saying that I never had the thing itself. I'm having the benefit at this moment; I had it the other day when I said to Chad 'Wait'; I shall have it still again when Sarah Pocock arrives. It's a benefit that would make a poor show for many people ”

“ Her eyebrows went up. "The Pococks are coming?"
"That, I mean, is what will happen—and happen as quickly as possible—in consequence of Chad's cable. They'll simply embark. Sarah will come to speak for her mother—with an effect different from my muddle."
Miss Gostrey more gravely wondered. "She then will take him back?"
"Very possibly—and we shall see. She must at any rate have the chance, and she may be trusted to do all she can."
"And do you want that?"
"Of course," said Strether, "I want it. I want to play fair." ”

“ He'll recognise that he's fully responsible, and will consider that he has been highly successful; so that any discussion we may have will bring us quite together again—bridge the dark stream that has kept us so thoroughly apart. ”

“ I've made Chad do it."
"That you decline to come? "
"That he declines. We had it out this morning, and I brought him round. He had come in before I was down to tell me he was ready—ready, I mean, to return. And he went off, after ten minutes with me, to say he wouldn't."
Miss Gostrey followed with intensity. "Then you've stopped him?"
Strether settled himself afresh in his chair. "I've stopped him. That is for the time. That"—he gave it to her more vividly—"is where I am."
"I see, I see. But where is Mr. Newsome? He was ready," she asked, "to go?" ”

“ The wonderful and special thing about you is that you are, at this time of day, youth." Then she always made, further, one of those remarks that she had completely ceased to adorn with hesitations or apologies, and that had, by the same token, in spite of their extreme straightness, ceased to produce in Strether the least embarrassment. ”

“ But she had lost for a moment the thread. "If it devolves on the Pococks, why do you stay?"
"Just to see that I do play fair—and a little also, no doubt, that they do." Strether was luminous as he had never been. "I came out to find myself in presence of new facts—facts that have kept striking me as less and less met by our old reasons. The matter's perfectly simple. New reasons—reasons as new as the facts themselves—are wanted; and of this our friends at Woollett—Chad's and mine—were at the earliest moment definitely notified. If any are producible Mrs. Pocock will produce them ”