He learned, too, that all crimes pale before "resisting the police in the execution of their duty"; then, he had to learn, to, the way in which other tramps must be approached--the silences necessary, the sort of questions which were useless, the jokes that must be laughed at and the jokes that must be resented.
All this is beyond me altogether; it was beyond even Frank's own powers of description.

A boy, coming home for the holidays for the first time, cannot make clear to his mother, or even to himself, what it is that has so utterly changed his point of view, and his relations towards familiar things.
* * * * * So with Frank.
He could draw countless little vignettes of his experiences and emotions--the particular sensation elicited, for example, by seeing through iron gates happy people on a lawn at tea--the white china, the silver, the dresses, the flannels, the lawn-tennis net--as he went past, with string tied below his knees to keep off the drag of the trousers, and a sore heel; the emotion of being passed by a boy and a girl on horseback; the flood of indescribable associations roused by walking for half a day past the split-oak paling of a great park, with lodge-gates here and there, the cooing of wood-pigeons, and the big house, among its lawns and cedars and geranium-beds, seen now and then, far off in the midst.

But what he could not describe, or understand, was the inner alchemy by which this new relation to things modified his own soul, and gave him a point of view utterly new and bewildering.

Curiously enough, however (as it seems to me), he never seriously considered the possibility of abandoning this way of life, and capitulating to his father.

A number of things, I suppose--inconceivable to myself--contributed to his purpose; his gipsy blood, his extraordinary passion for romance, the attraction of a thing simply because it was daring and unusual, and finally, a very exceptionally strong will that, for myself, I should call obstinacy.
The silence--as regards his old world--was absolute and unbroken.