The proof of its impartiality, if he had
thought of seeking it, would have appeared to him to lie
in the fact that he found her, in her personality, her
ideas, and her effects, to be damaged by London. The
conventionality--Kendal's careless generalization
preferred a broad term--of the place made her extreme
in every way, and it had recently come to be a conclusion
with him that English conventionality, in moderation,
was not wholly to be smiled at. Returning to it, its
protectiveness had impressed him strongly, and he had a
comforting sense of the responsibility it imposed upon
society. Paris and the Quartier stood out against it in
his mind like something full of light and color and
transient passion on the stage--something to be remembered
with recurrent thrills of keen satisfaction and to be
seen again. It had been more than this, he acknowledged,
for he had brought out of it an element that lightened
his life and vitalized his work, and gave an element of
joyousness to his imagination--it was certain that he
would go back there. And Miss Bell had been in it and
of it--so much in it and of it that he felt impatient
with her for permitting herself to be herself in any
other environment.
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