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220 ways an impression of increased self-confidence and maturity. His mind was admirably active, and always, after a quarter of an hour's talk with him, I asked myself what experience could really do, that seclusion had not, to make it bright and fine. Every now and then I was struck with his deep enjoyment of some new spectacle,—often trifling enough,—some thing foreign, local, picturesque, some detail of manner, some accident of scenery; and of the infinite freedom with which he felt he could go and come and rove and linger and observe it all. It was an expansion, an awakening, a coming to manhood in a graver fashion; as one might arrive somewhere, after delays, in some quiet after-hour which should transmute disappointment into gratitude for the preternatural vividness of first impressions. Each time I met him he spoke a little less of Madame Blumenthal, but let me know generally that he saw her often, and continued to admire her tremendously! I was forced to admit to myself, in spite of preconceptions, that if she was really the ruling star of this serene efflorescence, she must be a very fine woman. Pickering had the air of an ingenuous young philosopher sitting at the feet of an austere muse, and not of a sentimental spendthrift dangling about some supreme incarnation of levity.