Life in the great world--it was thus that he thought of the bickerings of the Dublin Nationalists and the schoolboy enthusiasms of college students--was not a very simple thing.

There was a complexity and a confusion in affairs which made it difficult to hold to any cause devotedly.

It seemed to him, looking back, that Miss Goold's ideals--and she had ideals, as he knew--were somehow vulgarized in their contact with the actual.

He had seen something of the joy she found in her conflict with O'Rourke, and it did not seem to him to be pure or ennobling.

At one time he was on the verge of deciding to do what the priest wished.