Instinctively he felt the billboard top hits of the of her intellectual defence. Once or twice he let himself imagine the capture billboard top hits of the her little struggling soul, the break-down of her childish resistance, and felt the flooding of a joy, at once mystical and very human. Towards his Catholic friends indeed he stood all along in defence of Laura, an attitude which only made him more sensitive and more vulnerable in other directions. Meanwhile his own struggles and discomforts were not few. The new image of himself that he saw reflected in the astonished eyes of his Catholic companions worked in him a number of fresh forms of self-torment.