“When then does he come?” “When Bilham has had time to write him, and hear from him about me. Bilham, however,” he pursued, “will report favourably—favourably for Chad. That will make him not afraid to come. I want you the more therefore, you see, for my bluff.” “Oh you’ll do yourself for your bluff.” She was perfectly easy. “At the rate you’ve gone I’m quiet.” “Ah but I haven’t,” said Strether, “made one protest.” She turned it over. “Haven’t you been seeing what there’s to protest about?” He let her, with this, however ruefully, have the whole truth. “I haven’t yet found a single thing.” “Isn’t there any one _with_ him then?” “Of the sort I came out about?” Strether took a moment. “How do I know? And what do I care?” “Oh oh!”—and her laughter spread. He was struck in fact by the effect on her of his joke. He saw now how he meant it as a joke. _She_ saw, however, still other things, though in an instant she had hidden them. “You’ve got at no facts at all?” He tried to muster them. “Well, he has a lovely home.” “Ah that, in Paris,” she quickly returned, “proves nothing. That is rather it _dis_proves nothing. They may very well, you see, the people your mission is concerned with, have done it _for_ him.” “Exactly. And it was on the scene of their doings then that Waymarsh and I sat guzzling.” “Oh if you forbore to guzzle here on scenes of doings,” she replied, “you might easily die of starvation.” With which she smiled at him. “You’ve worse before you.” “Ah I’ve _everything_ before me. But on our hypothesis, you know, they must be wonderful.” “They _are!_” said Miss Gostrey. “You’re not therefore, you see,” she added, “wholly without facts. They’ve _been_, in effect, wonderful.” To have got at something comparatively definite appeared at last a little to help—a wave by which moreover, the next moment, recollection was washed. “My young man does admit furthermore that they’re our friend’s great interest.” “Is that the expression he uses?” Strether more exactly recalled. “No—not quite.” “Something more vivid? Less?” He had bent, with neared glasses, over a group of articles on a small stand; and at this he came up. “It was a mere allusion, but, on the lookout as I was, it struck me. ‘Awful, you know, as Chad is’—those were Bilham’s words.” “‘Awful, you know’—? Oh!”—and Miss Gostrey turned them over. She seemed, however, satisfied. “Well, what more do you want?” He glanced once more at a bibelot or two, and everything sent him back. “But it _is_ all the same as if they wished to let me have it between the eyes.” She wondered. “Quoi donc?” “Why what I speak of. The amenity. They can stun you with that as well as with anything else.”