“Well then as yours bears _me_ nothing more’s needed.” With which she put again her question. “Has Mrs. Newsome money?” This time he heeded. “Oh plenty. That’s the root of the evil. There’s money, to very large amounts, in the concern. Chad has had the free use of a great deal. But if he’ll pull himself together and come home, all the same, he’ll find his account in it.” She had listened with all her interest. “And I hope to goodness you’ll find yours!” “He’ll take up his definite material reward,” said Strether without acknowledgement of this. “He’s at the parting of the ways. He can come into the business now—he can’t come later.” “Is there a business?” “Lord, yes—a big brave bouncing business. A roaring trade.” “A great shop?” “Yes—a workshop; a great production, a great industry. The concern’s a manufacture—and a manufacture that, if it’s only properly looked after, may well be on the way to become a monopoly. It’s a little thing they make—make better, it appears, than other people can, or than other people, at any rate, do. Mr. Newsome, being a man of ideas, at least in that particular line,” Strether explained, “put them on it with great effect, and gave the place altogether, in his time, an immense lift.” “It’s a place in itself?” “Well, quite a number of buildings; almost a little industrial colony. But above all it’s a thing. The article produced.” “And what _is_ the article produced?” Strether looked about him as in slight reluctance to say; then the curtain, which he saw about to rise, came to his aid. “I’ll tell you next time.” But when the next time came he only said he’d tell her later on—after they should have left the theatre; for she had immediately reverted to their topic, and even for himself the picture of the stage was now overlaid with another image. His postponements, however, made her wonder—wonder if the article referred to were anything bad. And she explained that she meant improper or ridiculous or wrong. But Strether, so far as that went, could satisfy her. “Unmentionable? Oh no, we constantly talk of it; we are quite familiar and brazen about it. Only, as a small, trivial, rather ridiculous object of the commonest domestic use, it’s just wanting in—what shall I say? Well, dignity, or the least approach to distinction. Right here therefore, with everything about us so grand—!” In short he shrank. “It’s a false note?” “Sadly. It’s vulgar.” “But surely not vulgarer than this.” Then on his wondering as she herself had done: “Than everything about us.” She seemed a trifle irritated. “What do you take this for?” “Why for—comparatively—divine!” “This dreadful London theatre? It’s impossible, if you really want to know.” “Oh then,” laughed Strether, “I _don’t_ really want to know!” It made between them a pause, which she, however, still fascinated by the mystery of the production at Woollett, presently broke. “‘Rather ridiculous’? Clothes-pins? Saleratus? Shoe-polish?”