midnight
She felt a vague pity for a man that seemed to have had no youth . Since his graduation from Balliol in a blaze of glory he had worked unceasingly , for he appeared to have found little of ordinary recreation in travel . She wondered if he would take his youth in his bald-headed season , like the self-made American millionaire . His style , pure , lucid , virile , distinguished , might have been the outcome of midnight travail , or , like his eloquence on the platform , a direct flight from the quickened brain . It certainly bore no resemblance to his amputated table talk . But in a moment she dismissed her speculations , for she had discovered a quality , overlooked before , but arresting in the recent light of his cold arrogance and haughty self-confidence . Behind his strict regard for facts and the keen insight and large grasp of his subject , which , without his evident care for the graces , would have distinguished his work from the dry report of equally conscientious but less gifted men , was the lonely play of a really lofty imagination , and a noble human sympathy .