temper blazed; he reached the stage of ignition without those displays of
sparks and smoke that are usual preliminaries to a 'flare-up.' He had
learned, too, in the course of his schooling, to simulate an imposing
unconcern under commonplace trials and tribulations, when it so pleased
him, and between the satisfaction to be felt in being able successfully
to assume a given virtue and in having actual possession of that virtue
the distinction is too delicate for unregenerate minds.

The young man did not envelop himself in his spare skin of
imperturbability at this crisis, because he felt that some show of active
resentment was necessary to repel effusive admirers and maintain the
barrier he had set up between himself and his fellow-travellers. When Jim
Done set foot on board the Francis Cadman he was flying from an
intolerable life, seeking to escape from despair. This he did not admit
to himself, for he had the indomitable pride of a lonely man who gave to
thought the time that should have been gloriously wasted on boon
companions and young love.

Done was a sensitive man, who had been some thing of a pariah since his
knickerbocker period, and was first the butt and later the bane of the
narrow, convention-governed public of a small English village. A fierce
defiance of the people amongst whom he had lived his life kept him in his
native place till after his twenty-first birthday. He rebelled with all
his soul against the animal unreason of these men, women, and children,
puzzling over the fanatical stupidity of their prejudice, and, striving
to beat it down, intensified it and kept it active long years after all
might have been forgotten had he bowed meekly to 'the workings of
Providence,' as manifested in the thinkings and doings of the Godfearing
people of Chisley.