 to know. He knew, up to the hilt -
that really came over Chad; he understood, felt, recorded his vow; and they
lingered 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,
