Such a muster takes place in no other brain.

Yet sometimes there he'll sit for hours together, gripping the arm of the chair, like a man holding fast because stranded, and then, just because his corn twinges, or it may be the gout, what execrations, and, dear me, to hear him talk of money, taking out his leather purse and grudging even the smallest silver coin, secretive and suspicious as an old peasant woman with all her lies.

Strange paralysis and constriction--marvellous illumination.
Serene over it all rides the great full brow, and sometimes asleep or in the quiet spaces of the night you might fancy that on a pillow of stone he lay triumphant.
Sopwith, meanwhile, advancing with a curious trip from the fire-place, cut the chocolate cake into segments.

Until midnight or later there would be undergraduates in his room, sometimes as many as twelve, sometimes three or four; but nobody got up when they went or when they came; Sopwith went on talking.

Talking, talking, talking--as if everything could be talked--the soul itself slipped through the lips in thin silver disks which dissolve in young men's minds like silver, like moonlight.