And the latter, even to young hopefulness, seemed the more
probable alternative.
Stephen walked back to the vicarage through the meadows, as he had
come, surrounded by the soft musical purl of the water through
little weirs, the modest light of the moon, the freshening smell
of the dews out-spread around. It was a time when mere seeing is
meditation, and meditation peace. Stephen was hardly philosopher
enough to avail himself of Nature's offer. His constitution was
made up of very simple particulars; was one which, rare in the
spring-time of civilizations, seems to grow abundant as a nation
gets older, individuality fades, and education spreads; that is,
his brain had extraordinary receptive powers, and no great
creativeness. Quickly acquiring any kind of knowledge he saw
around him, and having a plastic adaptability more common in woman
than in man, he changed colour like a chameleon as the society he
found himself in assumed a higher and more artificial tone. He
had not many original ideas, and yet there was scarcely an idea to
which, under proper training, he could not have added a
respectable co-ordinate.
He saw nothing outside himself to-night; and what he saw within
was a weariness to his flesh. Yet to a dispassionate observer,
his pretensions to Elfride, though rather premature, were far from
absurd as marriages go, unless the accidental proximity of simple
but honest parents could be said to make them so.
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