ered on it as they had lingered in their
walk to Strether's hotel the night of their first meeting. The latter
took, at this hour, all he could get; he had given all he had had to
give; he was as depleted as if he had spent his last sou. But there
was just one thing for which, before they broke off, Chad seemed
disposed slightly to bargain. His companion needn't, as he said, tell
him, but he might himself mention that he had been getting some news of
the art of advertisement. He came out quite suddenly with this
announcement while Strether wondered if his revived interest were what
had taken him, with strange inconsequence, over to London. He appeared
at all events to have been looking into the question and had
encountered a revelation. Advertising scientifically worked presented
itself thus as the great new force. "It really does the thing, you
know."

They were face to face under the street-lamp as they had been the first
night, and Strether, no doubt, looked blank. "Affects, you mean, the
sale of the object advertised?"

"Yes--but affects it extraordinarily; really beyond what one had
supposed. I mean of course when it's done as one makes out that in our
roaring age, it CAN be done. I've been finding out a little, though it
doubtless doesn't amount to much more than what you originally, so
awfully vividly--and all, very nearly, that first night--put before me.
It's an art like another, and infinite like all the arts." He went on
as if for the joke of it--almost as if his friend's face amused him.
"In the hands, naturally, of a master. The right man must take hold.
With the right man to work it c'est un monde."

Strether had watched him quite as if, there on the pavement without a
pretext, he had begun to dance a fancy step. "Is what you're thinking
of that you yourself, in the case you have in mind, would be the right
man?"

Chad had thrown back his light coat and thrust each of his thumbs into
an armhole of his waistcoat; in which position his fingers played up
and down. "Why, what is he but what you yourself, as I say, took me
for when you first came out?"

Strether felt a little faint, but he coerced his attention. "Oh yes,
and there's no doubt that, with your natural parts, you'd have much in
common with him. Advertising is clearly at this time of day the secret
of trade. It's quite possible it will be open to you--giving the whole
of your mind to it--to make the whole place hum with you. You