sen 'unpleasantness' on the old, the eternal subject--money.
Ignoble enough; but was it a new thing for him to discern ignoble
possibilities in Alma's nature?

Nevertheless, his thoughts were constantly occupied with the girl. Her
image haunted him; all his manhood was subdued and mocked by her
scornful witchery. From the infinitudes of reverie, her eyes drew near
and gazed upon him--eyes gleaming with mischief, keen with curiosity; a
look now supercilious, now softly submissive; all the varieties of
expression caught in susceptible moments, and stored by a too faithful
memory. Her hair, her lips, her neck, grew present to him, and lured
his fancy with a wanton seduction. In self-defence--pathetic stratagem
of intellectual man at issue with the flesh--he fell back upon the
idealism which ever strives to endow a fair woman with a beautiful
soul; he endeavoured to forget her body in contemplation of the
spiritual excellencies that might lurk behind it. To depreciate her was
simpler, and had generally been his wont; but subjugation had reached
another stage in him. He summoned all possible pleadings on the girl's
behalf: her talents, her youth, her grievous trials. Devotion to
classical music cannot but argue a certain loftiness of mind; it might,
in truth, be somehow akin to 'religion'. Remembering his own follies
and vices at the age of four-and-twenty, was it not reason, no less
than charity, to see in Alma the hope of future good? Nay, if it came
to that, did she not embody infinitely more virtue, in every sense of
the word, than he at the same age?

One must be just to women, and, however paltry the causes, do honour to
the cleanliness of their life. Nothing had suggested to him that Alma
was unworthy of everyday respect. Even when ill-mannered, she did not
lose her sexual dignity. And after all she had undergone, there would
have been excuse enough for decline of character, to say nothing of a
lapse from the articles of good breeding. This letter of hers, what did
it signify but the revolt of a spirit of independence, irritated by all
manner of sufferings, great and small? Ought he not to have replied in
other terms? Was it worthy of him--man of the world, with passions,
combats, experience multiform, assimilated in his long, slow growth--to
set his sarcasm against a girl's unhappiness?

He was vexed with himself. He had not behaved as a gentleman. And how
many a time, in how many situations, had he incurred this f