"Can you fancy anything more naively touching than this old mandarin spending several thousand pounds to console his white man?
Well, there she is.
The old mandarin's sons have inherited her, and Davidson with her; and he commands her; and what with his salary and trading privileges he makes a lot of money; and everything is as before; and Davidson even smiles--you have seen it?
Well, the smile's the only thing which isn't as before." "Tell me, Hollis," I asked, "what do you mean by good in this connection ?" "Well, there are men who are born good just as others are born witty.
What I mean is his nature.

No simpler, more scrupulously delicate soul had ever lived in such a--a--comfortable envelope.

How we used to laugh at Davidson's fine scruples! In short, he's thoroughly humane, and I don't imagine there can be much of any other sort of goodness that counts on this earth.

And as he's that with a shade of particular refinement, I may well call him a '_really_ good man.'" I knew from old that Hollis was a firm believer in the final value of shades.

And I said: "I see"-- because I really did see Hollis's Davidson in the sympathetic stout man who had passed us a little while before.
But I remembered that at the very moment he smiled his placid face appeared veiled in melancholy--a sort of spiritual shadow.