They were occasions of discussion, none the less, and Strether had never in his life heard so many opinions on so many subjects.

There were opinions at Woollett, but only on three or four.

The differences were there to match; if they were doubtless deep, though few, they were quiet--they were, as might be said, almost as shy as if people had been ashamed of them.

People showed little diffidence about such things, on the other hand, in the Boulevard Malesherbes, and were so far from being ashamed of them--or indeed of anything else--that they often seemed to have invented them to avert those agreements that destroy the taste of talk.

No one had ever done that at Woollett, though Strether could remember times when he himself had been tempted to it without quite knowing why.