His
education had been really almost monastic. It had found him evidently a
very compliant, yielding subject; his gentle affectionate spirit was not
one of those that need to be broken. It had bequeathed him, now that he
stood on the threshold of the great world, an extraordinary freshness of
impression and alertness of desire, and I confess that, as I looked at
him and met his transparent blue eye, I trembled for the unwarned
innocence of such a soul. I became aware, gradually, that the world had
already wrought a certain work upon him and roused him to a restless,
troubled self-consciousness. Everything about him pointed to an
experience from which he had been debarred; his whole organism trembled
with a dawning sense of unsuspected possibilities of feeling. This
appealing tremor was indeed outwardly visible. He kept shifting himself
about on the grass, thrusting his hands through his hair, wiping a light
perspiration from his forehead, breaking out to say something and rushing
off to something else. Our sudden meeting had greatly excited him, and I
saw that I was likely to profit by a certain overflow of sentimental
fermentation. I could do so with a good conscience, for all this
trepidation filled me with a great friendliness.
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