With this sharpest perception yet, it was like a chill in the air to him, it was almost appalling, that a creature so fine could be, by mysterious forces, a creature so exploited.

For at the end of all things they WERE mysterious: she had but made Chad what he was--so why could she think she had made him infinite?
She had made him better, she had made him best, she had made him anything one would; but it came to our friend with supreme queerness that he was none the less only Chad.

Strether had the sense that HE, a little, had made him too; his high appreciation had as it were, consecrated her work The work, however admirable, was nevertheless of the strict human order, and in short it was marvellous that the companion of mere earthly joys, of comforts, aberrations (however one classed them) within the common experience should be so transcendently prized.

It might have made Strether hot or shy, as such secrets of others brought home sometimes do make us; but he was held there by something so hard that it was fairly grim.

This was not the discomposure of last night; that had quite passed--such discomposures were a detail; the real coercion was to see a man ineffably adored.