Amiability, of a truth, is an aid to success; it has even been known to be the principle of large accumulations; but the link, for the mind, is none the less fatally missing between proof, on such a scale, of continuity, if of nothing more insolent, in one field, and accessibility to distraction in every other.

Variety of imagination--what is that but fatal, in the world of affairs, unless so disciplined as not to be distinguished from monotony?
Mr.Verver then, for a fresh, full period, a period betraying, extraordinarily, no wasted year, had been inscrutably monotonous behind an iridescent cloud.

The cloud was his native envelope--the soft looseness, so to say, of his temper and tone, not directly expressive enough, no doubt, to figure an amplitude of folds, but of a quality unmistakable for sensitive feelers.

He was still reduced, in fine, to getting his rare moments with himself by feigning a cynicism.

His real inability to maintain the pretence, however, had perhaps not often been better instanced than by his acceptance of the inevitable to-day--his acceptance of it on the arrival, at the end of a quarter-of-an hour, of that element of obligation with which he had all the while known he must reckon.