Briggs took an impersonal interest in his new humility, as he did in everything that related to the workings of his own mind. As far as he could follow them, he assured himself that he had always wished to understand his own nature just as it was, without any self-praise or palliation; and yet he had begun to make a complete revision of his opinion of himself. He wondered how far the change could be due to the change that he felt in the attitude toward him of other men. Hitherto, among men he had always been treated with consideration; now he knew himself to be regarded as a man who, if he had not failed, had not quite succeeded, and, if he had not been smirched in character, was still marked with the suspicion of taint. Most of all he dreaded betraying in his manner his knowledge of this change. He had seen so many men betray the consciousness of their own weakness. Especially he tried to avoid giving the least suggestion of bravado. He reflected on the fickleness of good opinion; he had basked in the sunshine of good opinion all his life; when it was withdrawn he felt chilled and depressed. It was when he met some of the men who had treated him with special deference and who now addressed him with easy equality or with indifference, or, as occasionally happened, with cold formality, that he felt most deeply his humiliation. But at these times he felt a swift reaction that found expression in a stubborn assertion of courage. After all, he reflected grimly, it paid to be on the level. The important thing was not to be contemptuous to slights, but to be so established in the sense of being right, that slights could not wound. He saw now that his previous attitude toward life had been false and unstable; it had never been established on rock-bottom.