He could have no conception what that demand was to the hearer--how probingly it touched the hidden sensibility, the vividly conscious reticence of years; how the uncertainty he was insisting on as part of his own hope had always for Daniel been a threatening possibility of painful revelation about his mother. 
He could have no conception what that demand meant to the hearer - how probingly it touched the hidden sensibility, the reticence of years; how the uncertainty had always for Daniel held a threat of painful revelation about his mother. 