Chapter 3 - Page 2

I can't believe it!"

"It certainly seems more."

"It seems like ten years. What an exquisite ass I was!"

"Do you feel so wise now?"

"Verily! Don't I look so? Surely I have n't the same face. Have n't I a
different eye, a different expression, a different voice?"

"I can hardly say, because I have seen the transition. But it 's very
likely. You are, in the literal sense of the word, more civilized. I
dare say," added Rowland, "that Miss Garland would think so."

"That 's not what she would call it; she would say I was corrupted."

Rowland asked few questions about Miss Garland, but he always listened
narrowly to his companion's voluntary observations.

"Are you very sure?" he replied.

"Why, she 's a stern moralist, and she would infer from my appearance
that I had become a cynical sybarite." Roderick had, in fact, a Venetian
watch-chain round his neck and a magnificent Roman intaglio on the third
finger of his left hand.

"Will you think I take a liberty," asked Rowland, "if I say you judge
her superficially?"

"For heaven's sake," cried Roderick, laughing, "don't tell me she 's
not a moralist! It was for that I fell in love with her, and with rigid
virtue in her person."

"She is a moralist, but not, as you imply, a narrow one. That 's more
than a difference in degree; it 's a difference in kind. I don't know
whether I ever mentioned it, but I admire her extremely. There is
nothing narrow about her but her experience; everything else is large.
My impression of her is of a person of great capacity, as yet wholly
unmeasured and untested. Some day or other, I 'm sure, she will judge
fairly and wisely of everything."

"Stay a bit!" cried Roderick; "you 're a better Catholic than the Pope.
I shall be content if she judges fairly of me--of my merits, that is.
The rest she must not judge at all. She 's a grimly devoted little
creature; may she always remain so! Changed as I am, I adore her none
the less. What becomes of all our emotions, our impressions," he went
on, after a long pause, "all the material of thought that life pours
into us at such a rate during such a memorable three months as these?
There are twenty moments a week--a day, for that matter, some days--that
seem supreme, twenty impressions that seem ultimate, that appear to
form an intellectual era. But others come treading on their heels and
sweeping them along, and they all melt like water into water and settle
the question of precedence among themselves. The curious thing is that
the more the mind takes in, the more it