If Strether had been sure at each juncture of what--with Bilham in especial--she talked about, he might have traced others and winced at them and felt Waymarsh wince; but he was in fact so often at sea that his sense of the range of reference was merely general and that he on several different occasions guessed and interpreted only to doubt.

He wondered what they meant, but there were things he scarce thought they could be supposed to mean, and "Oh no--not THAT!" was at the end of most of his ventures.

This was the very beginning with him of a condition as to which, later on, it will be seen, he found cause to pull himself up; and he was to remember the moment duly as the first step in a process.

The central fact of the place was neither more nor less, when analysed--and a pressure superficial sufficed--than the fundamental impropriety of Chad's situation, round about which they thus seemed cynically clustered.

Accordingly, since they took it for granted, they took for granted all that was in connexion with it taken for granted at Woollett--matters as to which, verily, he had been reduced with Mrs.Newsome to the last intensity of silence.