Only once or twice, during the course of their long talk, did the young man detect any sign of personal feeling.

Then for an instant, some veil seemed to be lifted, some curtain drawn aside; while, with dazzling effect, he became cognizant of underlying bitterness, underlying romance--of secret dealings of man with man, of man with woman, and the dealing, arbitrary, immutable, final, of Death and a Greater than Death, with both.
These revelations though of the briefest, over before he fairly grasped their import, gone like a breath, were still sufficient to discredit many preconceived ideas and enlarge his mental horizon to a somewhat anxious extent.

They carried him very far from life as lived at Canton Magna Rectory; very far from all, indeed, in which the roots of his experience were set, thus producing an atmosphere of doubt, of haunting and insidious unrest.
And of that atmosphere he was particularly sensible when, standing in the hall, flat candlestick in hand, he at last bade Sir Charles Verity good night.
"It has been a wonderful evening, sir," he said, simply and modestly.
"You have been awfully kind in sparing me so much of your time; but, indeed, it has not been time wasted.

I begin to measure a little what India means, I hope.

Certainly I begin to measure the depth of my own ignorance.