"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.
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