Something like this was the common under-current in Deronda's mind while he was reading law or imperfectly attending to polite conversation. Meanwhile he had not set about one function in particular with zeal and steadiness. Not an admirable experience, to be proposed as an ideal; but a form of struggle before break of day which some young men since the patriarch have had to pass through, with more or less of bruising if not laming.

This was the under-current in Deronda's mind while he was reading law or imperfectly attending to polite conversation. Meanwhile he had not set about any function in particular with zeal and steadiness.
