If she chose to regard him as an old fogy, well and good--it was perhaps better so.

Not that--if circumstances had been other than they were---he would have been the least inclined to make love to her.

Her beauty was astonishing.

But the wonderful energy and vitality of her crude youth rather repelled than attracted him.
The thought of the wrestles ahead of him was a weariness to an already tired man.

Debate with her, on all the huge insoluble questions she seemed to be determined to raise, was of all things in the world most distasteful to him.