The difficulty was that if he was mild he wasn't, for her purpose, conscious.

If she wished him conscious--as everything about her cried aloud that she did--she must accordingly be at costs to make him so.
Conscious he was, for himself--but only of too many things; so she must choose the one she required.
Practically, however, it at last got itself named, and when once that had happened they were quite at the centre of their situation.

One thing had really done as well as another; when Strether had spoken of Waymarsh's leaving him, and that had necessarily brought on a reference to Mrs.Pocock's similar intention, the jump was but short to supreme lucidity.

Light became indeed after that so intense that Strether would doubtless have but half made out, in the prodigious glare, by which of the two the issue had been in fact precipitated.

It was, in their contracted quarters, as much there between them as if it had been something suddenly spilled with a crash and a splash on the floor.