He waited for pottering old ladies, for gaping slaveys, for the perpetual Buttonses from Thrupp's; and the thing in all this that she would have liked most unspeakably to put to the test was the possibility of her having for him a personal identity that might in a particular way appeal.

There were moments when he actually struck her as on her side, as arranging to help, to support, to spare her.
But such was the singular spirit of our young friend that she could remind herself with a pang that when people had awfully good manners--people of that class,--you couldn't tell.

These manners were for everybody, and it might be drearily unavailing for any poor particular body to be overworked and unusual.

What he did take for granted was all sorts of facility; and his high pleasantness, his relighting of cigarettes while he waited, his unconscious bestowal of opportunities, of boons, of blessings, were all a part of his splendid security, the instinct that told him there was nothing such an existence as his could ever lose by.

He was somehow all at once very bright and very grave, very young and immensely complete; and whatever he was at any moment it was always as much as all the rest the mere bloom of his beatitude.