It was Strether's belief that he had been comparatively innocent before this first migration, and even that the first effects of the migration would not have been, without some particular bad accident, to have been deplored.

There had been three months--he had sufficiently figured it out--in which Chad had wanted to try.

He HAD tried, though not very hard--he had had his little hour of good faith.

The weakness of this principle in him was that almost any accident attestedly bad enough was stronger.

Such had at any rate markedly been the case for the precipitation of a special series of impressions.