He was a man who liked to understand thoroughly everything
he saw and felt, and this new atmosphere in which he found himself
was a curious source of excitement to him. Only he knew that the
central figure of it all was this girl, that he had come out here
to think about her, and that henceforth she had become to him the
standard of those things which were worth having in life. Everything
about her had been a revelation to him. The women whom he had come
across in his battle upwards, barmaids and their fellows, fifth-rate
actresses, occasionally the suburban wife of a prosperous City man,
had impressed him only with a sort of coarse contempt. It was
marvellous how thoroughly and clearly he had recognised Ernestine
at once as a type of that other world of womenkind, of which he
admittedly knew nothing. Yet it was so short a time since she had
wandered into his life, so short a time that he was even a little
uneasy at the wonderful strength of this new passion, a thing which
had leaped up like a forest tree in a world of magic, a live,
fully-grown thing, mighty and immovable in a single night. He
found himself thinking of all the other things in life from a
changed standpoint. His sense of proportions was altered, his
financial triumphs were no longer omnipotent.
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