Above all things he needed release, he needed deliverance; and yet he knew, more surely at this moment than ever before, that he was not free, that he was still in chains, still the servant, not the master, of tradition.

He lacked the courage of life, the will to feel and to live.

Only through emotion, only through some courageous adventure of the spirit, only through daring to be human, could he reach liberation; and yet he could not dare; he could not let himself go; he could not lose his life in order that he might find it.

Corinna was right, he felt, when she called him a prig.

She was right though he hated priggishness, though he longed to be natural and human, to let himself be swept away on the tide of some irresistible impulse.