At least sometimes he envied them and sometimes he thought they lied.

He could only think _about_ a subject and wait for the unknown gods to bring him a decision.

And this is what he now did, with his eyes fixed on the towers and tanks and tenements, on the pale winter sky, and, when he got up and leaned his elbows on the parapet, on the crowds that looked like a flood of purple insects in the streets.
He thought of Mathilde's youth and his own untried capacities for success, of poverty and children, of the probable opposition of Mathilde's family and of a strange, sinister, disintegrating power he felt or suspected in Mrs.Farron.He felt that it was a terrible risk to ask a young girl to take and that it was almost an insult to be afraid to ask her to take it.

That was what his mother had always said about these cherished, protected creatures: they were not prepared to meet any strain in life.

He knew he would not have hesitated to ask a girl differently brought up.