s between them.
"You mean that just your hour with him told you so much of his story?
Very good; I'm not such a fool, on my side, as that I don't understand
you, or as that I didn't in some degree understand HIM. That he has
done what he liked most isn't, among any of us, a matter the least in
dispute. There's equally little question at this time of day of what
it is he does like most. But I'm not talking," he reasonably
explained, "of any mere wretch he may still pick up. I'm talking of
some person who in his present situation may have held her own, may
really have counted."

"That's exactly what I am!" said Miss Gostrey. But she as quickly made
her point. "I thought you thought--or that they think at
Woollett--that that's what mere wretches necessarily do. Mere wretches
necessarily DON'T!" she declared with spirit. "There must, behind
every appearance to the contrary, still be somebody--somebody who's not
a mere wretch, since we accept the miracle. What else but such a
somebody can such a miracle be?"

He took it in. "Because the fact itself IS the woman?"

"A woman. Some woman or other. It's one of the things that HAVE to
be."

"But you mean then at least a good one."

"A good woman?" She threw up her arms with a laugh. "I should call
her excellent!"

"Then why does he deny her?"

Miss Gostrey thought a moment. "Because she's too good to admit! Don't
you see," she went on, "how she accounts for him?"

Strether clearly, more and more, did see; yet it made him also see
other things. "But isn't what we want that he shall account for HER?"

"Well, he does. What you have before you is his way. You must forgive
him if it isn't quite outspoken. In Paris such debts are tacit."

Strether could imagine; but still--! "Even when the woman's good?"

Again she laughed out. "Yes, and even when the man is! There's always
a caution in such cases," she more seriously explained--"for what it
may seem to show. There's nothing that's taken as showing so much here
as sudden unnatural goodness."

"Ah then you're speaking now," Strether said, "of people who are NOT
nice."

"I delight," she replied, "in your classifications. But do you want
me," she asked, "to give you in the matter, on this ground, the wisest
advice I'm capable of? Don't consider her, don't judge her at all in
herself. Consider her and judge her only in Chad."

He had the courage at least of his companion's logic. "Because then I
s