“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 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.”