Most of us have to pass through such ordeals before character and conviction receive their final bias; before human nature has its wild trouble, and then settles into "cold rock and quiet world;" which any lesser after-shocks may modify, but cannot radically change.
I tried to think.

I felt that to be wholly a man I should turn from those eyes drawing me on.

I recalled the words of Clovelly, who had said to me that afternoon, half laughingly: "Dr.Marmion, I wonder how many of us wish ourselves transported permanently to that time when we didn't know champagne from 'alter feiner madeira' or dry hock from sweet sauterne; when a pretty face made us feel ready to abjure all the sinful lusts of the flesh and become inheritors of the kingdom of heaven?
Egad! I should like to feel it once again.

But how can we, when we have been intoxicated with many things; when we are drunk with success and experience; have hung on the fringe of unrighteousness; and know the world backward, and ourselves mercilessly ?" Was I, like the drunkard, coming surely to the time when I could no longer say yes to my wisdom, or no to my weakness?
I knew that, an hour before, in filling a phial with medicine, I found I was doing it mechanically, and had to begin over again, making an effort to keep my mind to my task.

I think it is an axiom that no man can properly perform the business of life who indulges in emotional preoccupation.
These thoughts, which take so long to write, passed then through my mind swiftly; but her eyes were on me with a peculiar and confident insistence--and I yielded.