"That was all very well then," he
thought to himself, "when the grapes were beyond my reach, but now
it is different." Besides, who but a prig would set himself high aims,
or make high resolves at all?
Some of his old friends, on learning that he had got rid of his
supposed wife and was now comfortably off again, wanted to renew their
acquaintance; he was grateful to them and sometimes tried to meet
their advances half way, but it did not do, and ere long he shrank
back into himself, pretending not to know them. An infernal demon of
honesty haunted him which made him say to himself: "These men know a
great deal, but do not know all- if they did they would cut me- and
therefore I have no right to their acquaintance."
He thought that everyone except himself was sans peur et sans
reproche. Of course they must be, for if they had not been, would they
not have been bound to warn all who had anything to do with them of
their deficiencies? Well, he could not do this, and he would not
have people's acquaintance under false pretences, so he gave up even
hankering after rehabilitation and fell back upon his old tastes for
music and literature.
Of course he has long since found out how silly all this was, how
silly I mean in theory, for in practice it worked better than it ought
to have done, by keeping him free from liaisons which would have
tied his tongue and made him see success elsewhere than where he
came in time to see it.
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