Underfeeling

‘It is from a more general cause: simply an underfeeling I have that at the most propitious moment the distance to the possibility of sorrow is so short that a man's spirits must not rise higher than mere cheerfulness out of bare respect to his insight.’

She had said to him: ‘Oh…a little caviare! A peach!’ a long time before, with the vague under-feeling that the names of such comestibles must convey to her person a charm in the eyes of Caliban.

He's forgotten Sheila, in fact, and if he's thinking about friends, it's only a vague underfeeling that he would be really impressive if allied with Virginia Novello.