It still was that.
He knew it for that by the wave of disgust that went over him when his
imagination, prompted by the Marchesino's brutality, set pictures
before him of himself in other relations with Vere. The real man in
him recoiled so swiftly, so uncontrollably, that he was reassured as
to his own condition. And yet he found much to condemn, something to
be contemptuous of, something almost to weep over--that desire to
establish a monopoly--that almost sickly regret for his vanished
youth, that bitterness against the community to which all young things
instinctively belong, whatever their differences of intellect,
temperament, and feeling.
Could he have fallen?
Even now he did not absolutely know whether such a decadence might
have been possible to him or not. But that now it would not be
possible he felt that he did know.
Age could never complete youth, and Vere must be complete. He had
desired to make her gift for song complete. He could never desire to
mutilate her life.
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