Strether more than reaffirmed—“Oh he’s excellent. I more and more like,” he insisted, “to see him with them;” though the oddity of this tone between them grew sharper for him even while they spoke. It placed the young man so before them as the result of her interest and the product of her genius, acknowledged so her part in the phenomenon and made the phenomenon so rare, that more than ever yet he might have been on the very point of asking her for some more detailed account of the whole business than he had yet received from her. The occasion almost forced upon him some question as to how she had managed and as to the appearance such miracles presented from her own singularly close place of survey. The moment in fact however passed, giving way to more present history, and he continued simply to mark his appreciation of the happy truth. “It’s a tremendous comfort to feel how one can trust him.” And then again while for a little she said nothing—as if after all to _her_ trust there might be a special limit: “I mean for making a good show to them.” “Yes,” she thoughtfully returned—“but if they shut their eyes to it!” Strether for an instant had his own thought. “Well perhaps that won’t matter!” “You mean because he probably—do what they will—won’t like them?” “Oh ‘do what they will’—! They won’t do much; especially if Sarah hasn’t more—well, more than one has yet made out—to give.” Madame de Vionnet weighed it. “Ah she has all her grace!” It was a statement over which, for a little, they could look at each other sufficiently straight, and though it produced no protest from Strether the effect was somehow as if he had treated it as a joke. “She may be persuasive and caressing with him; she may be eloquent beyond words. She may get hold of him,” she wound up—“well, as neither you nor I have.” “Yes, she _may_”—and now Strether smiled. “But he has spent all his time each day with Jim. He’s still showing Jim round.” She visibly wondered. “Then how about Jim?” Strether took a turn before he answered. “Hasn’t he given you Jim? Hasn’t he before this ‘done’ him for you?” He was a little at a loss. “Doesn’t he tell you things?” She hesitated. “No”—and their eyes once more gave and took. “Not as you do. You somehow make me see them—or at least feel them. And I haven’t asked too much,” she added; “I’ve of late wanted so not to worry him.” “Ah for that, so have I,” he said with encouraging assent; so that—as if she had answered everything—they were briefly sociable on it. It threw him back on his other thought, with which he took another turn; stopping again, however, presently with something of a glow. “You see Jim’s really immense. I think it will be Jim who’ll do it.” She wondered. “Get hold of him?” “No—just the other thing. Counteract Sarah’s spell.” And he showed now, our friend, how far he had worked it out. “Jim’s intensely cynical.” “Oh dear Jim!” Madame de Vionnet vaguely smiled.