Now, in the sweet-smelling starlight, he felt gently wooed to egotism.

There was a project connected with his going abroad which it was on his tongue's end to communicate.

It had no relation to hospitals or dormitories, and yet it would have sounded very generous.

But it was not because it would have sounded generous that poor Mallet at last puffed it away in the fumes of his cigar.

Useful though it might be, it expressed most imperfectly the young man's own personal conception of usefulness.