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 DISproves 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."
"Oh," she answered, "you'll come round!
I must see them each," she went on, "for myself.
I mean Mr. Bilham and Mr. Newsome—Mr. Bilham naturally first.
Once only—once for each; that will do.
But face to face—for half an hour.
What's Mr. Chad," she immediately pursued, "doing at Cannes?
Decent men don't go to Cannes with the—well, with the kind of ladies you mean."
"Don't they?" Strether asked with an interest in decent men that amused her.
"No, elsewhere, but not to Cannes.
Cannes is different.
Cannes is better.
Cannes is best.
I mean it's all people you know—when you do know them.
And if HE does, why that's different too.