He saw why at present--he had but wanted to promote intercourse.
These, however, were but parenthetic memories, and the turn taken by his affair on the whole was positively that if his nerves were on the stretch it was because he missed violence.

When he asked himself if none would then, in connexion with it, ever come at all, he might almost have passed as wondering how to provoke it.

It would be too absurd if such a vision as THAT should have to be invoked for relief; it was already marked enough as absurd that he should actually have begun with flutters and dignities on the score of a single accepted meal.

What sort of a brute had he expected Chad to be, anyway ?--Strether had occasion to make the enquiry but was careful to make it in private.

He could himself, comparatively recent as it was--it was truly but the fact of a few days since--focus his primal crudity; but he would on the approach of an observer, as if handling an illicit possession, have slipped the reminiscence out of sight.