In a sense, she had awakened him, and he imagined she had meant to do so.

All the same, to think she loved him was ridiculous; she was rather experimenting with fresh material.

Yet she was accountable for his discontent.

She had helped him to see that while he labored in the woods he had missed much.
He wanted the society of cultivated women and men with power and influence; to use control instead of carrying out orders; and to know something of refinement and beauty.

After all, his father was a cultivated Englishman, although Lister imagined he had inherited qualities that helped him most from his Canadian mother.