He had been met in the three cases--the only
ones he at all compared with his present case--by the frank confession
that he didn't somehow, charming as he was, cause himself to be
superstitiously believed in; and the lapse of life, afterward, had
cleared up many doubts.

It _wouldn't_ have done, he eventually, he lucidly saw, each time he had
been refused; and the candour of his nature was such that he could
live to think of these very passages as a proof of how right he had
been--right, that is, to have put himself forward always, by the
happiest instinct, only in impossible conditions. He had the happy
consciousness of having exposed the important question to the crucial
test, and of having escaped, by that persistent logic, a grave mistake.
What better proof of his escape than the fact that he was now free to
renew the all-interesting inquiry, and should be exactly, about to do
so in different and better conditions? The conditions were better by as
much more--as much more of his career and character, of his situation,
his reputation he could even have called it, of his knowledge of life,
of his somewhat extended means, of his possibly augmented charm, of
his certainly improved mind and temper--as was involved in the actual
impending settlement. Once he had got into motion, once he had crossed
the Park and passed out of it, entering, with very little space to
traverse, one of the short new streets that abutted on its east side,
his step became that of a man young enough to find confidence, quite to
find felicity, in the sense, in almost any sense, of action. He could
still enjoy almost anything, absolutely an unpleasant thing, in default
of a better, that might still remind him he wasn't so old. The standing
newness of everything about him would, it was true, have weakened this
cheer by too much presuming on it; Mrs. Worthingham's house, before
which he stopped, had that gloss of new money, that glare of a piece
fresh from the mint and ringing for the first time on any counter,
which seems to claim for it, in any transaction, something more than the
"face" value.

This could but be yet more the case for the impression of the observer
introduced and committed. On our friend's part I mean, after his
admission and while still in the hall, the sense of the general shining
immediacy, of the still unhushed clamour of the shock, was perhaps
stronger than he had ever known it. That broke out from every corner as
the high p