It was at any rate significant, and what WAS remarkable was the way his friend's nature and manner put on for him, through this very drop of demonstration, a greater intensity.

It struck him really that he had never so lived with her as during this period of her silence; the silence was a sacred hush, a finer clearer medium, in which her idiosyncrasies showed.

He walked about with her, sat with her, drove with her and dined face-to-face with her--a rare treat "in his life," as he could perhaps have scarce escaped phrasing it; and if he had never seen her so soundless he had never, on the other hand, felt her so highly, so almost austerely, herself: pure and by the vulgar estimate "cold," but deep devoted delicate sensitive noble.

Her vividness in these respects became for him, in the special conditions, almost an obsession; and though the obsession sharpened his pulses, adding really to the excitement of life, there were hours at which, to be less on the stretch, he directly sought forgetfulness.

He knew it for the queerest of adventures--a circumstance capable of playing such a part only for Lambert Strether--that in Paris itself, of all places, he should find this ghost of the lady of Woollett more importunate than any other presence.
When he went back to Maria Gostrey it was for the change to something else.