Or it was a pathos, a joy in all things good, a vast tenderness, so sweet, so divinely pure that it could not be framed in words, so great and so deep that it found its only expression in tears.

There came over him a vague sense of those things which are too beautiful to be comprehended, of a nobility, a self-oblivion, an immortal eternal love and kindness, all goodness, all benignity, all pity for sin, all sorrow for grief, all joy for the true, the right, and the pure.
To be better, to be true and right and pure, these were the only things that were worth while, these were the things that he seemed to feel in the music.

It was as if for the moment he had become a little child again, not ashamed to be innocent, ignorant of vice, still believing in all his illusions, still near to the great white gates of life.
The appeal had been made directly to what was best and strongest in Vandover, and the answer was quick and over-powering.

All the good that still survived in him leaped to life again in an instant, clamouring for recognition, pleading for existence.

The other Vandover, the better Vandover, wrestled with the brute in him once more, never before so strong, never so persistent.