It was a shade, fairly, that brought a flush into his face; so that for a moment, as they waited together, their difference was between them. “You mean that just your hour with him told you so much of his story? Very good; I’m not such a fool, on my side, as that I don’t understand you, or as that I didn’t in some degree understand _him_. That he has done what he liked most isn’t, among any of us, a matter the least in dispute. There’s equally little question at this time of day of what it is he does like most. But I’m not talking,” he reasonably explained, “of any mere wretch he may still pick up. I’m talking of some person who in his present situation may have held her own, may really have counted.” “That’s exactly what _I_ am!” said Miss Gostrey. But she as quickly made her point. “I thought you thought—or that they think at Woollett—that that’s what mere wretches necessarily do. Mere wretches necessarily _don’t!_” she declared with spirit. “There must, behind every appearance to the contrary, still be somebody—somebody who’s not a mere wretch, since we accept the miracle. What else but such a somebody can such a miracle be?” He took it in. “Because the fact itself _is_ the woman?” “_A_ woman. Some woman or other. It’s one of the things that _have_ to be.” “But you mean then at least a good one.” “A good woman?” She threw up her arms with a laugh. “I should call her excellent!” “Then why does he deny her?” Miss Gostrey thought a moment. “Because she’s too good to admit! Don’t you see,” she went on, “how she accounts for him?” Strether clearly, more and more, did see; yet it made him also see other things. “But isn’t what we want that he shall account for _her?_” “Well, he does. What you have before you is his way. You must forgive him if it isn’t quite outspoken. In Paris such debts are tacit.” Strether could imagine; but still—! “Even when the woman’s good?” Again she laughed out. “Yes, and even when the man is! There’s always a caution in such cases,” she more seriously explained—“for what it may seem to show. There’s nothing that’s taken as showing so much here as sudden unnatural goodness.” “Ah then you’re speaking now,” Strether said, “of people who are _not_ nice.” “I delight,” she replied, “in your classifications. But do you want me,” she asked, “to give you in the matter, on this ground, the wisest advice I’m capable of? Don’t consider her, don’t judge her at all in herself. Consider her and judge her only in Chad.” He had the courage at least of his companion’s logic. “Because then I shall like her?” He almost looked, with his quick imagination as if he already did, though seeing at once also the full extent of how little it would suit his book. “But is that what I came out for?” She had to confess indeed that it wasn’t. But there was something else. “Don’t make up your mind. There are all sorts of things. You haven’t seen him all.”