He had not
felt by any means sure that she really liked his society, and he had not
expected that she would so far forget herself as to show her inclination
by her impatience. He had judged, rightly or wrongly, that she was a
woman who weighed every word and gesture beforehand, and who would be
incapable of such an oversight as an unpremeditated manifestation of
feeling.
Very young men are nowadays apt to imagine complications of character
where they do not exist, often overlooking them altogether where they
play a real part. The passion for analysis discovers what it takes for
new simple elements in humanity's motives, and often ends by feeding on
itself in the effort to decompose what is not composite. The greatest
analysers are perhaps the young and the old, who, being respectively
before and behind the times, are not so intimate with them as those who
are actually making history, political or social, ethical or scandalous,
dramatic or comic.
It is very much the custom among those who write fiction in the English
language to efface their own individuality behind the majestic but
rather meaningless plural, "we," or to let the characters created
express the author's view of mankind.
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