And he said to himself that Lady Holme was the one woman
who could set free, if the occasion came, this passionate, unusual and
surely admirable captive at present chained within him, doomed to
inactivity and the creeping weakness that comes from enforced repose.
Carey's passion for Lady Holme had come into being shortly before her
marriage. No one knew much about it, or about the rupture of all
relations between him and the Holmes which had eventually taken place.
But the fact that Carey had lost his head about Lady Holme was known to
half London. For Carey, when carried away, was singularly reckless;
singularly careless of consequences and of what people thought. It was
difficult to influence him, but when influenced he was almost painfully
open in his acknowledgment of the power that had reached him. As a rule,
however, despite his apparent definiteness, his decisive violence, there
seemed to be something fluid in his character, something that divided and
flowed away from anything which sought to grasp and hold it. He had
impetus but not balance; swiftness, but a swiftness that was
uncontrolled. He resembled a machine without a brake.
It was soon after his rupture with the Holmes that his intimates began to
notice that he was becoming inclined to drink too much. When Pierce
returned to London from Rome he was immediately conscious of the slight
alteration in his friend. Once he remonstrated with Carey about it.
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