“So that Chad has done the whole thing?”
“Oh no—not the whole. We’ve done some of it. You and I and ‘Europe.’”
“Europe—yes,” Strether mused.
“Dear old Paris,” she seemed to explain. But there was more, and, with one of her turns, she risked it. “And dear old Waymarsh. You,” she declared, “have been a good bit of it.”
He sat massive. “A good bit of what, ma’am?”
“Why of the wonderful consciousness of our friend here. You’ve helped too in your way to float him to where he is.”
“And where the devil is he?”
She passed it on with a laugh. “Where the devil, Strether, are you?”
He spoke as if he had just been thinking it out. “Well, quite already in Chad’s hands, it would seem.” And he had had with this another thought. “Will that be—just all through Bilham—the way he’s going to work it? It would be, for him, you know, an idea. And Chad with an idea—!”
“Well?” she asked while the image held him.