He was blessed with a natural impulse to disfigure with a direct, unreasoning blow the comely visage of temptation.

And certainly, in no man could a want of integrity have been less excusable.

Newman knew the crooked from the straight at a glance, and the former had cost him, first and last, a great many moments of lively disgust.

But none the less some of his memories seemed to wear at present a rather graceless and sordid mien, and it struck him that if he had never done anything very ugly, he had never, on the other hand, done anything particularly beautiful.

He had spent his years in the unremitting effort to add thousands to thousands, and, now that he stood well outside of it, the business of money-getting appeared tolerably dry and sterile.