If he was to be placed under control he gained leave to try what his position MIGHT agreeably give him.

An ideal rigour would perhaps postpone the trial till after the Pococks had shown their spirit; and it was to an ideal rigour that he had quite promised himself to conform.
Suddenly, however, on this particular day, he felt a particular fear under which everything collapsed.

He knew abruptly that he was afraid of himself--and yet not in relation to the effect on his sensibilities of another hour of Madame de Vionnet.

What he dreaded was the effect of a single hour of Sarah Pocock, as to whom he was visited, in troubled nights, with fantastic waking dreams.

She loomed at him larger than life; she increased in volume as she drew nearer; she so met his eyes that, his imagination taking, after the first step, all, and more than all, the strides, he already felt her come down on him, already burned, under her reprobation, with the blush of guilt, already consented, by way of penance, to the instant forfeiture of everything.
He saw himself, under her direction, recommitted to Woollett as juvenile offenders are committed to reformatories.