As a child, not old enough to give a definite name
to the thing she watched and pondered on, in child fashion, Bettina
Vanderpoel had thought much on this subject. As she had grown older, she
had never been ignorant of the workings of her own temperament, and she
had looked on for years at the laws which had wrought in her father's
being--the laws of strength, executive capacity, and that pleasure in
great schemes, which is roused less by a desire for gain than for a
strongly-felt necessity for action, resulting in success. She mentally
followed other people on their way, sometimes asking herself how far the
individual was to be praised or blamed for his treading of the path he
seemed to choose. And now there was given her the opportunity to study
the workings of the nature of Nigel Anstruthers, which was a curious
thing.
He was not an individual to be envied. Never was man more tormented by
lack of power to control his special devil, at the right moment of time,
and therefore, never was there one so inevitably his own frustration.
This Betty saw after the passing of but a few days, and wondered how far
he was conscious or unconscious of the thing. At times it appeared to
her that he was in a state of unrest--that he was as a man wavering
between lines of action, swayed at one moment by one thought, at another
by an idea quite different, and that he was harried because he could not
hold his own with himself.
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