The truth is that his extraordinarily receptive mind went with an even more abnormal receptivity of character: unlike most men of marked ability, he took colour from his associates.

In this as in love of courtesies and dislike of coarse words he was curiously feminine.

Intercourse with Beardsley, for example, had backed his humorous gentleness with a sort of challenging courage; his new intimacy with Lord Alfred Douglas, coming on the top of his triumph as a playwright, was lending him aggressive self-confidence.

There was in him that [Greek: hubris] (insolent self-assurance) which the Greek feared, the pride which goeth before destruction.

I regretted the change in him and was nervously apprehensive.
After dinner we all went out by the door which gives on the Embankment, for it was after 12.30.One of the party proposed that we should walk for a minute or two--at least as far as the Strand, before driving home.