Black women reported strained conversations with white women friends, if they were, for now, on speaking terms.

I had a brief, strained conversation with the brother, Robert Allen, who couldn't tell me what had become of David.

Her father and Elizabeth kept up a strained conversation, but they did not speak to her, nor she to them.

He forced his thoughts away from the strained conversations he'd had with Deanna since the incident.

After several minutes of strained conversation.

The men had a short, uncommonly strained conversation.

They sat together at a banquet table and ate a spiced meal accompanied by strained conversation.

Having a strained conversation like this, every now and then, is the best you could ever hope for.

It was strange, she thought, that two people who had no trouble with words should suddenly have such a strained conversation.

It was an abrupt end to a strained conversation.