For he had met some of them, had inquired into their lives, listened to their jargon, and had come in a faint sort of way to understand them.

It had been an encouragement to him.

After all it was only serious work, life lived out face to face with the great realities of existence which could make a man.

In a dim way he realised that there were few in her own class likely to satisfy Ernestine.

He even dared to tell himself that those things which rendered him chiefly unfit for her, the acquired vulgarities of his rougher life, were things which he could put away; that a time would come when he would take his place confidently in her world, and that the end would be success.