I began boy-like by being so damned credulous and impulsive and affectionate and tender-hearted that even my kid sister laughed at me; and she was only three years older than I.Then followed that period of social loneliness, the longing for the companionship of boys and girls--girls particularly, in spite of agonies of shyness and the awakening terrors of shame when the domestic troubles ended in an earthquake which gave me to my father and Helen to my mother, and a scandal to the newspapers....

O hell! I'm talking like an autobiography! Don't go, if you can stand it for a moment longer; I'm never likely to do it again." Hamil, silent and uncomfortable, stood stiffly upright, gloved hands resting on the balustrade behind him.

Malcourt continued to stare at the orange-and-yellow butterflies dancing over the snowy beds of blossoms.
"In college it was the same," he said.

"I had few friends--and no home to return to after--my father-died." He hesitated as though listening.
Whenever he spoke of his father, which was seldom, he seemed to assume that curious listening attitude; as though the man, dead by his own hand, could hear him....
"Wayward saw me through.

I've paid him back what he spent on me.