He had frequently for a month, turned over what he should say on this very occasion, and he seemed at last to have said nothing he had thought of--everything was so totally different.
But in spite of all he had put the flag at the window.

This was what he had done, and there was a minute during which he affected himself as having shaken it hard, flapped it with a mighty flutter, straight in front of his companion's nose.

It gave him really almost the sense of having already acted his part.

The momentary relief--as if from the knowledge that nothing of THAT at least could be undone--sprang from a particular cause, the cause that had flashed into operation, in Miss Gostrey's box, with direct apprehension, with amazed recognition, and that had been concerned since then in every throb of his consciousness.
What it came to was that with an absolutely new quantity to deal with one simply couldn't know.

The new quantity was represented by the fact that Chad had been made over.