By this time they had been nearly sixty
hours together, and you will understand that Mr. Hoopdriver's
feelings had undergone a considerable intensification and
development. At first Jessie had been only an impressionist
sketch upon his mind, something feminine, active, and dazzling,
something emphatically "above " him, cast into his company by a
kindly fate. His chief idea, at the outset, as you know, had been
to live up to her level, by pretending to be more exceptional,
more wealthy, better educated, and, above all, better born than
he was. His knowledge of the feminine mind was almost entirely
derived from the young ladies he had met in business, and in that
class (as in military society and among gentlemen's servants) the
good old tradition of a brutal social exclusiveness is still
religiously preserved. He had an almost intolerable dread of her
thinking him a I bounder.' Later he began to perceive the
distinction of her idiosyncracies. Coupled with a magnificent
want of experience was a splendid enthusiasm for abstract views
of the most advanced description, and her strength of conviction
completely carried Hoopdriver away. She was going to Live her Own
Life, with emphasis, and Mr. Hoopdriver was profoundly stirred to
similar resolves. So soon as he grasped the tenor of her views,
he perceived that he himself had thought as much from his
earliest years. "Of course," he remarked, in a flash of sexual
pride, "a man is freer than a woman. End in the Colonies, y'know,
there isn't half the Conventionality you find in society in this
country.
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