It was pitiable that he, who knew the mixed motives on which social judgments depend, should still feel himself so swayed by them.

How could he lift Lily to a freer vision of life, if his own view of her was to be coloured by any mind in which he saw her reflected?
The moral oppression had produced a physical craving for air, and he strode on, opening his lungs to the reverberating coldness of the night.
At the corner of Fifth Avenue Van Alstyne hailed him with an offer of company.
"Walking?
A good thing to blow the smoke out of one's head.

Now that women have taken to tobacco we live in a bath of nicotine.

It would be a curious thing to study the effect of cigarettes on the relation of the sexes.

Smoke is almost as great a solvent as divorce: both tend to obscure the moral issue." Nothing could have been less consonant with Selden's mood than Van Alstyne's after-dinner aphorisms, but as long as the latter confined himself to generalities his listener's nerves were in control.