He hadn't disturbed people with the
queerness of their having to know a haunted man, though he had had
moments of rather special temptation on hearing them say they were
forsooth "unsettled." If they were as unsettled as he was--he who
had never been settled for an hour in his life--they would know
what it meant. Yet it wasn't, all the same, for him to make them,
and he listened to them civilly enough. This was why he had such
good--though possibly such rather colourless--manners; this was
why, above all, he could regard himself, in a greedy world, as
decently--as in fact perhaps even a little sublimely--unselfish.
Our point is accordingly that he valued this character quite
sufficiently to measure his present danger of letting it lapse,
against which he promised himself to be much on his guard. He was
quite ready, none the less, to be selfish just a little, since
surely no more charming occasion for it had come to him. "Just a
little," in a word, was just as much as Mss Bartram, taking one day
with another, would let him. He never would be in the least
coercive, and would keep well before him the lines on which
consideration for her--the very highest--ought to proceed.
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