They wandered away from that subject at
last, however, and talked of many other things. He told Ideala of his
first coming to the Great Hospital as a patient, and gave her some of
the details of his own case, and told her enough of his private history
to arouse her sympathy and interest; but of the nature of these
confidences I know nothing. Ideala felt in honour bound not to repeat
them, as they were made to her in the course of a private conversation,
and she was always scrupulously faithful to all such trusts. I know,
however, that he was a man who had suffered acutely, both from unhappy
circumstances and from those troubles of the mind which beset clever
men at the outset of their career, and sometimes never leave them
entirely at peace. But this man was something more than a clever man;
he was a man in a thousand. He had in a strong degree all that is worst
and best in a man. The highest and most spiritual aspirations warred in
him with the most carnal impulses, and he spent his days in fighting to
attain to the one and subdue the other.
Ideala had never known a man like this man.
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