Kendal hardly admitted to himself that his acquaintance with Elfrida had gone beyond the point of impartial observation.

The proof of its impartiality, if he had thought of seeking it, would have appeared to him to lie in the fact that he found her, in her personality, her ideas, and her effects, to be damaged by London.

The conventionality--Kendal's careless generalization preferred a broad term--of the place made her extreme in every way, and it had recently come to be a conclusion with him that English conventionality, in moderation, was not wholly to be smiled at.

Returning to it, its protectiveness had impressed him strongly, and he had a comforting sense of the responsibility it imposed upon society.

Paris and the Quartier stood out against it in his mind like something full of light and color and transient passion on the stage--something to be remembered with recurrent thrills of keen satisfaction and to be seen again.