He dashed his hand impatiently across them.

At this stage of youth he was constantly falling out with and resenting his own faculty of pity, of emotion.

The attitude of mind had in it a sort of secret half-conscious terror of what feeling might do with him did he but give it head.

He did not want to feel--feeling only hurt and stabbed--he wanted to enjoy, to take in, to discover--to fling the wild energies of mind and body into some action worthy of them.

And because he had no knowledge to show him how, and a wavering will, he suffered and deteriorated.
The Dawsons, indeed, became his close friends.