Do you know what they are ?" Jim pursued as he looked about him, giving the question, as Strether felt, but half his care--"do you know what they are?
They're about as intense as they can live." "Yes"-- and Strether's concurrence had a positive precipitation; "they're about as intense as they can live." "They don't lash about and shake the cage," said Jim, who seemed pleased with his analogy; "and it's at feeding-time that they're quietest.

But they always get there." "They do indeed--they always get there!" Strether replied with a laugh that justified his confession of nervousness.

He disliked to be talking sincerely of Mrs.

Newsome with Pocock; he could have talked insincerely.

But there was something he wanted to know, a need created in him by her recent intermission, by his having given from the first so much, as now more than ever appeared to him, and got so little.