The explanation of this combination of openness and reserve, friendliness
and unapproachableness, was that his boyhood and youth had been spent
wholly among books. That life had trained him not to look to others for
amusement, sympathy or counsel, but to depend upon himself. As his
temperament was open and good-natured and sympathetic, he was as free from
enemies and enmities as he was from friends and friendships.
Women there had been--several women, a succession of idealizations which
had dispersed in the strong light of his common sense. He had never
disturbed himself about morals in what he regarded as the limited sense. He
always insisted that he was free; and he was careful only of his personal
pride and of taking no advantage of another. What he had said to Alice
about marriage was true--as to his intentions, at least. A poor woman, he
felt, he could not marry; a rich woman, he felt, he would not marry. And he
cared nothing about marriage because he was never lonely, never leaned or
wished to lean upon another, abhorred the idea of any one leaning upon him;
because he regarded freedom as the very corner-stone of his scheme of life.
The nearest he had come to companionship was with Alice. With the other
women whom he had known in various degrees from warmth to white-heat, there
had been interruptions, no such constant freedom of access, no such
intermingling of daily life.
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