Page:The Ambassadors (London, Methuen & Co., 1903).djvu/98

92 "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, a 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 he 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, but 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 is Mr. Chad," she immediately pursued, "doing at Cannes? Decent men don't go to Cannes with the—well, with the kind you mean."

"Don't they?" Strether asked with an interest in decent men that amused her.