They had proved, successively, these impressions--all of Musette and Francine, but Musette and Francine vulgarised by the larger evolution of the type--irresistibly sharp: he had "taken up," by what was at the time to be shrinkingly gathered, as it was scantly mentioned, with one ferociously "interested" little person after another.

Strether had read somewhere of a Latin motto, a description of the hours, observed on a clock by a traveller in Spain; and he had been led to apply it in thought to Chad's number one, number two, number three.

Omnes vulnerant, ultima necat--they had all morally wounded, the last had morally killed.

The last had been longest in possession--in possession, that is, of whatever was left of the poor boy's finer mortality.

And it hadn't been she, it had been one of her early predecessors, who had determined the second migration, the expensive return and relapse, the exchange again, as was fairly to be presumed, of the vaunted best French for some special variety of the worst.
He pulled himself then at last together for his own progress back; not with the feeling that he had taken his walk in vain.