Wouldn't it be precisely by having learned to be a gentleman that he had mastered the consequent trick of looking so well that one could scarce speak to him straight?
But what in the world was the clue to such a prime producing cause?
There were too many clues then that Strether still lacked, and these clues to clues were among them.

What it accordingly amounted to for him was that he had to take full in the face a fresh attribution of ignorance.

He had grown used by this time to reminders, especially from his own lips, of what he didn't know; but he had borne them because in the first place they were private and because in the second they practically conveyed a tribute.

He didn't know what was bad, and--as others didn't know how little he knew it--he could put up with his state.

But if he didn't know, in so important a particular, what was good, Chad at least was now aware he didn't; and that, for some reason, affected our friend as curiously public.