o-night?" Strether wondered. "Then I hope he
isn't doing anything very bad."

"They've got you," she portentously answered.

"Do you mean he IS--?"

"They've got you," she merely repeated. Though she disclaimed the
prophetic vision she was at this instant the nearest approach he had
ever met to the priestess of the oracle. The light was in her eyes.
"You must face it now."

He faced it on the spot. "They HAD arranged--?"

"Every move in the game. And they've been arranging ever since. He
has had every day his little telegram from Cannes."

It made Strether open his eyes. "Do you KNOW that?"

"I do better. I see it. This was, before I met him, what I wondered
whether I WAS to see. But as soon as I met him I ceased to wonder, and
our second meeting made me sure. I took him all in. He was acting--he
is still--on his daily instructions."

"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.

"Well, is Chad--what shall I say?--monstrous?"

"Oh as much as you like! But the idea you speak of," she said, "won't
have been his best. He'll have a better. It won't be all through
little Bilham that he'll work it."

This already sounded almost like a hope destroyed. "Through whom else
then?"

"That's what we shall see!" But quite as she spoke she turned, and
Strether turned; for the door of the box had opened, with the click of
the ouvreuse, from the lobby, and a gentleman, a stranger to them, had
come in with a quick step. The door closed behind him, and, though
their faces showed him his mistake, his air, which was striking, was