Perhaps even it would be nearer the truth to say that⁠—without a word⁠—he himself had cleared it up. He had made the whole charge absurd. My conclusion bloomed there with the real rose flush of his innocence: he was only too fine and fair for the little horrid, unclean school world, and he had paid a price for it. I reflected acutely that the sense of such differences, such superiorities of quality, always, on the part of the majority⁠—which could include even stupid, sordid headmasters⁠—turn infallibly to the vindictive.