He does not stop to lament, nor does
he hang about analysing his emotions. He runs and runs and runs,
and keeps on running until he has worked the poison out of his
system. Not until then does he attempt introspection.
Lord Dawlish, though ignorant of this fact, pursued almost
identically the same policy. He did not run on leaving Lady
Wetherby's house, but he took a very long and very rapid walk,
than which in times of stress there are few things of greater
medicinal value to the human mind. To increase the similarity, he
was conscious of a curious sense of being poisoned. He felt
stifled--in want of air.
Bill was a simple young man, and he had a simple code of ethics.
Above all things he prized and admired and demanded from his
friends the quality of straightness. It was his one demand. He had
never actually had a criminal friend, but he was quite capable of
intimacy with even a criminal, provided only that there was
something spacious about his brand of crime and that it did not
involve anything mean or underhand. It was the fact that Mr
Breitstein whom Claire had wished him to insinuate into his club,
though acquitted of actual crime, had been proved guilty of
meanness and treachery, that had so prejudiced Bill against him.
The worst accusation that he could bring against a man was that he
was not square, that he had not played the game.
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