Sentence No. 101 · 6 July 2026
He had never yet heard a young girl express herself in just this fashion; never, at least, save in cases where to say such things seemed a kind of demonstrative evidence of a certain laxity of deportment.
Henry James, Daisy Miller
Henry James — Daisy Miller (1878) · Read it at Project Gutenberg
What holds this sentence together
The semicolon here pivots from a flat assertion to a qualifying afterthought introduced by 'never, at least, save in cases where' — when you see a semicolon followed by a softening adverb, the qualification always trails the main claim, never precedes it.
How it appears in Sentle
On Sentle this sentence arrives in 8 pieces, shuffled, with the lines that lead up to it for context. A traveller reflects on the gulf between a young woman's manner and her likely nature. Putting it back in the author’s order is the puzzle — and the order is rarely arbitrary, which is what the note above is about.
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