He was not like the majority of his sex and years, who weave their physical and mental dreams in the loom of a girl's face, in her glance, in the curves of her mouth.

Deliberately, owing chiefly to his morbid consciousness of his own physical defects, he had long been accustomed to check the instincts natural to a young man in this regard.

He had seen too often the facility with which others, more fortunate than he, get delightedly lost in that golden haze; he had experienced too often the absence of attractiveness in himself.

How could any girl of the London ballroom, he had so frequently asked himself, tolerate dancing or sitting out with him when there was Francis, and a hundred others like him, so pleased to take his place?
Nor, so he told himself, was his mind one whit more apt than his body.
It did not move lightly and agreeably with unconscious smiles and easy laughter.

By nature he was monkish, he was celibate.