But he checked himself in time, conscious above all that he was in the presence of matters deeper than he had yet ventured to fear, that there was more in it than anything he had explicitly admitted could account for—and he had thought himself no stranger to admissions: so that, not wishing to seem to understand where he could not accept, nor to seem to accept where he could not approve, and still less, with undue haste, to advise, he assumed the mere appearance of casting no weight whatever into the scales of his colleague’s decision.