don't see much difference between being
brutal for good reasons, and being brutal for bad ones."

Pierson looked down at her with a troubled smile. There was something
fantastic to him in this sudden philosophising by one whom he had watched
grow up from a tiny thing. Out of the mouths of babes and
sucklings--sometimes! But then the young generation was always something
of a sealed book to him; his sensitive shyness, and, still more, his
cloth, placed a sort of invisible barrier between him and the hearts of
others, especially the young. There were so many things of which he was
compelled to disapprove, or which at least he couldn't discuss. And they
knew it too well. Until these last few months he had never realised that
his own daughters had remained as undiscovered by him as the interior of
Brazil. And now that he perceived this, he was bewildered, yet could not
imagine how to get on terms with them.

And he stood looking at Noel, intensely puzzled, suspecting nothing of
the hard fact which was altering her--vaguely jealous, anxious, pained.
And when she had gone up to bed, he roamed up and down the room a long
time, thinking. He longed for a friend to confide in, and consult; but
he knew no one. He shrank from them all, as too downright, bluff, and
active; too worldly and unaesthetic; or too stiff and narrow. Amongst
the younger men in his profession he was often aware of faces which
attracted him, but one could not confide deep personal questions to men
half one's age. But of his own generation, or his elders, he knew not
one to whom he could have gone.

VIII

Leila was deep in her new draught of life. When she fell in love it had
always been over head and ears, and so far her passion had always burnt
itself out before that of her partner. This had been, of course, a great
advantage to her. Not that Leila had ever expected her passions to burn
themselves out. When she fell in love she had always thought it was for
always. This time she was sure it was, surer than she had ever been.
Jimmy Fort seemed to her the man she had been looking for all her life.
He was not so good-looking as either Farie or Lynch, but beside him these
others seemed to her now almost ridiculous. Indeed they did not figure
at all, they shrank, they withered, they were husks, together with the
others for whom she had known passing weaknesses. There was only one man
in the world for her now, and would be for evermor