These men, one and all, seemed to be up to the neck in life, kept young and human by the taste of it upon their palate.

The contemplation of their whole-sided existence, their sound combination of work and play, produced in him a sort of jealousy, for he knew that there was something behind it, which he lacked.
The night was bright and dry and there were still crowds about Leicester Square, Piccadilly Circle and Piccadilly itself.

As he walked, he looked into the faces of the women who passed him by, struggling against his old abhorrence as against one of the sickly offshoots of an over-eclectic epicureanism.

They typified not vice but weakness, the unhappy result of man's inevitable revolt against unnatural laws.

Yet even then the mingled purity and priggishness encouraged by years of repression forbade any vital change in his sentiments.