There was no vivacity of thought there.

All that they could do, in the main, he fancied, was this one thing.

He pictured to himself the dreariness of the mornings after, the stale dregs of things when only sleep and thought of gain could aid in the least; and more than once, even at his age, he shook his head.

He wanted contact which was more intimate, subtle, individual, personal.
So came Lillian Semple, who was nothing more to him than the shadow of an ideal.

Yet she cleared up certain of his ideas in regard to women.
She was not physically as vigorous or brutal as those other women whom he had encountered in the lupanars, thus far--raw, unashamed contraveners of accepted theories and notions--and for that very reason he liked her.