Miss Gostrey continued suggestive. “Madame de Vionnet?”
“She has plenty.”
“Certainly—she had quantities of old. But there are different ways of making one’s self felt.”
“Yes, it comes, no doubt, to that. You now—”
He was benevolently going on, but she wouldn’t have it. “Oh I don’t make myself felt; so my quantity needn’t be settled. Yours, you know,” she said, “is monstrous. No one has ever had so much.”
It struck him for a moment. “That’s what Chad also thinks.”
“There you are then—though it isn’t for him to complain of it!”
“Oh he doesn’t complain of it,” said Strether.
“That’s all that would be wanting! But apropos of what,” Maria went on, “did the question come up?”
“Well, of his asking me what it is I gain.”