The principle I have just mentioned as operating had been , with the most newly disembarked disembark of the two men , wholly instinctive -- the fruit of a sharp sense sense that , delightful as it would be to find himself looking , after so much separation , into his comrade 's face , his business would be a trifle bungled should he simply arrange for this countenance to present itself to the nearing near steamer as the first " note note , " of Europe .

Nothing could have been odder than Strether 's sense sense of himself as at that moment launched in something of which the sense would be quite disconnected from the sense of his past and which was literally beginning there and then .