He was very lonely, and he loved company.
His age was that at which the affections and the instincts alike impel
the man to know more of woman--the processes of her mind, her
capacities, her emotions, the idiosyncrasies which divided her from his
own sex.
Hitherto he had been chaste, though once when he had confessed it to
Terrapin, that incredulous person said something about the marines, and
repeated it as a good joke; he felt, indeed, that he was not entirely
manly. He had half a doubt that he was worthy to walk with men, else why
had not his desires, like theirs, been stronger than his virtue; and had
not the very feebleness of desire proved also a feebleness of power?
But, more than all, he had a weakness for Suzette.
There was old Terrapin, with bonnets and dresses in his wardrobe, and a
sewing-basket on his mantel, and with his own huge boots outside the
door a pair of tapering gaiters, and in his easy-chair a little being to
sing and chatter and mix his punch and make his cigarettes. Ah! how much
more entrancing would be Ralph's chamber with Suzette to garnish it! He
would make a thousand studies of her face; she should be his model, his
professor, his divinity! What was gross in her he would refine; what
dark he would make known.
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