at, so have I," he said with encouraging assent; so that--as
if she had answered everything--they were briefly sociable on it. It
threw him back on his other thought, with which he took another turn;
stopping again, however, presently with something of a glow. "You see
Jim's really immense. I think it will be Jim who'll do it."

She wondered. "Get hold of him?"

"No--just the other thing. Counteract Sarah's spell." And he showed
now, our friend, how far he had worked it out. "Jim's intensely
cynical."

"Oh dear Jim!" Madame de Vionnet vaguely smiled.

"Yes, literally--dear Jim! He's awful. What HE wants, heaven forgive
him, is to help us."

"You mean"--she was eager--"help ME?"

"Well, Chad and me in the first place. But he throws you in too,
though without as yet seeing you much. Only, so far as he does see
you--if you don't mind--he sees you as awful."

"'Awful'?"--she wanted it all.

"A regular bad one--though of course of a tremendously superior kind.
Dreadful, delightful, irresistible."

"Ah dear Jim! I should like to know him. I MUST."

"Yes, naturally. But will it do? You may, you know," Strether
suggested, "disappoint him."

She was droll and humble about it. "I can but try. But my wickedness
then," she went on, "is my recommendation for him?"

"Your wickedness and the charms with which, in such a degree as yours,
he associates it. He understands, you see, that Chad and I have above
all wanted to have a good time, and his view is simple and sharp.
Nothing will persuade him--in the light, that is, of my behaviour--that
I really didn't, quite as much as Chad, come over to have one before it
was too late. He wouldn't have expected it of me; but men of my age,
at Woollett--and especially the least likely ones--have been noted as
liable to strange outbreaks, belated uncanny clutches at the unusual,
the ideal. It's an effect that a lifetime of Woollett has quite been
observed as having; and I thus give it to you, in Jim's view, for what
it's worth. Now his wife and his mother-in-law," Strether continued to
explain, "have, as in honour bound, no patience with such phenomena,
late or early--which puts Jim, as against his relatives, on the other
side. Besides," he added, "I don't think he really wants Chad back. If
Chad doesn't come--"

"He'll have"--Madame de Vionnet quite apprehended--"more of the free
hand?"

"Well, Chad's the bigger man."

"So he'll work now, en dessous, to keep