sunshine so strong that you didn't need your overcoat, he undertook expeditions into the country, sometimes in company with students of his own master, a set with whom he had no trouble in keeping on amiable terms but with whom he had no promptings to "mix." Indeed his lack of interest in these earnest and erratic souls caused him to marvel. Perhaps, he concluded, they are artists and I am not.
Fortified by the generosity of his own decision not to play the traitor, he was for several days, even for weeks, able to thrust his emotions aside,—or rather, he persuaded himself that he was transmuting his passion into channels which would irrigate more profitable areas. In other words, another dose of the Professor Thanet's logical formulae. Gradually, however, they surged back into the reservoir where they exerted such an intolerable pressure. Then some neglected ego within him invented arguments designed to break down his noble resolutions. Your fancied nobility, it whispered, is pure poppycock; what have heroics to do with love? Heroics belong in the realm of sentimentality, and a very old-fashioned brand at that. It's an age of speed, of quick returns on investment, of catch as catch can. If you propose to be noble, you'd better retire into a hermitage, and end your days in proud isolation. The best you can then hope for is to be stuffed and exhibited as the last known specimen of the honnête homme.
Most of all, this neglected and sarcastic ego kept
