s between us which lasted for a long while.

I myself had by this time fallen into a severe conflict of feeling. My
temperament was not like Varvilliers'. For an hour or two, when I was
exhilarated with society and cheered by wine, I could seem to myself
such as he naturally and permanently was. But I was not a native of the
clime. I raised myself to those heights of unmoral serenity by an effort
and an artifice. He forgot himself easily. I was always examining
myself. That same motive, or instinct, or tradition of feeling (I do not
know how best to describe it) on whose altar I had sacrificed my first
passion was still strong in me. I did not fear that Coralie would or
could exercise a political influence over me, but I was loth that she
should possess a control of any sort. I clung obstinately to the
conception of myself as standing alone, as being independent and under
the power of nobody in any respect. This was to me a stronger check than
the restraint of accepted morality. Looking back on the matter, and
judging myself as I should judge any young man, I am confident that my
passion would easily have swept away the ordinary scruples. It was my
other conscience, my King's conscience, that raised the barrier and
protracted the resistance. Here is another case of that reaction of my
position on myself which has been such a feature of my life.
Varvilliers' unreasoned philosophy did not cover this point. Here I had
to fight out the question for myself. It was again a struggle between
the man and the king, between a natural impulse and the strength of an
intellectual conception. I perceived with mingled amusement and
bitterness how entirely Varvilliers failed to appreciate the condition
of my mind or to conceal his surprise at my alternate hot and cold fits,
urgency followed by a drawing-back, eagerness to be moving at moments
when nothing could be done, succeeded by refusals to stir when the road
was clear. I believe that he came to have a very poor opinion of me as a
man of the world; but his kindness toward me never varied.

But there was one to whom my mind was an open book, who read easily and
plainly every thought of it, because it was written in the same
characters as was his own. The politician who risked his future, the
debtor who every day incurred new expenses, the devotee of principles
who sacrificed them for his passion, the deviser of schemes who ruined
them at the demand of his desires, here was the man wh