THE   AMBASSADORS
This appeared almost all Strether wanted. "Isn't your having
seen them for yourself then the thing, beyond all others, that
has come of their visit?"
Chad looked as if he thought it nice of his old friend to put it
so. "Don't you count it as anything that you're dished—if you
are dished?   Are you, my dear man, dished?"
It sounded as if he were asking if he had caught cold or hurt
his foot, and Strether, for a minute, but smoked and smoked. " I
want to see her again.   I must see her."
" Of course you must." Then Chad hesitated. "Do you mean-
a—mother herself?"
" Oh, your mother—that will depend."
It was as if Mrs. Newsome had somehow been placed by the
words very far off. Chad, however, endeavored in spite^ of this to
reach the place.   " What do you mean it will depend on ?"
Strether, for all answer, gave him a longish look.   " I was speak-
ing of Sarah.   I must positively—though she quite cast me off-
see her again.   I can't part with her that way."
" Then she was awfully unpleasant ?"
Again Strether exhaled. " She was what she had to be. I mean
that from the moment they're not delighted they can only be-
well what I admit she was. We gave them," he went on, "their
chance to be delighted, and they've walked up to it, and looked all
round it, and not taken it."
" You can bring a horse to water—!" Chad suggested.
" Precisely.   And the tune to which, this morning, Sarah wasn't
delighted—the tune to which, to adopt your metaphor, she refused
to drink—leaves us on that side nothing more to hope."
Chad had a pause; and then as if consolingly: "It was never
of. course really the least on the cards that they would be ' de-
lighted.'"                                                                     ,     „„     ,   , .
"Well I don't know, after all," Strether mused. "I've had to
come as'far round. However "-he shook it off-" it's doubtless
my performance that's absurd."
" There are certainly moments," said Chad, " when you seem to
me too good to be true.    Yet if you are true," he added, "that
seems to be all that need concern me."
" I'm true, but I'm incredible.   I'm fantastic and ridiculous—1
368