Dignity he had in abundance, and a certain mellow, old-fashioned quality; yet, in spite of his well-favoured youth, he was singularly lacking in sympathetic appeal.
Already people were beginning to say that they "admired Culpeper; but he was a bit of a prig, and they couldn't get really in touch with him." His attitude of mind, which was passive but critical, had developed the faculties of observation rather than the habits of action.

As a member of the community he was indifferent and amiable, gay and ironic.

Only the few who had seen his reserve break down before the rush of an uncontrollable impulse suspected that there were rich veins of feeling buried beneath his conventional surface, and that he cherished an inarticulate longing for heroic and splendid deeds.

The war had left him with a nervous malady which he had never entirely overcome; and this increased both his romantic dissatisfaction with his life and his inability to make a sustained effort to change it.
The sky had faded swiftly to pale orange; the distant buildings appeared to swim toward him in the silver air; and the naked trees barred the white slopes with violet shadows.

In the topmost branches of an old sycamore the thinnest fragment of a new moon hung trembling like a luminous thread.