How could he explain this in himself? That kindred obliquity, which he had so recently tracked down among the “higher circles” of King’s Barton, had not affected him to anything resembling this degree of vicious sympathy! The vision of those two girls remained like a deadly-sweet drop of delicious fermentation in some vein within him⁠—some vein or nerve that seemed in contact with the very core of his consciousness. Like some virulent berry-juice, insidiously sweet and yet maddeningly bitter, like a drop of that old classic poison distilled from the blood of the enamoured centaur⁠—that look, that gesture of the Farmer’s Rest girl teased and troubled him. The averted head of her muslin-frocked companion, the contour of that soft, conscious, youthful profile, stirred his senses even more.

“Damn!” he thought. “Don’t I yet know the worst of my vicious, secretive nature?”