Ascends from a tone of gray worldliness to one of more romantic and poetic vision, both of which have strong associations with the liberal fluidity of individual perceptions. Stephen also begins to see beauty in a new and more personal way. His early encounters with women, particularly those with prostitutes, did not allow him to appreciate a woman's beauty, but rather were attempts to express himself as an individual in a system that frowned upon that notion. The descriptions of those encounters are fleeting and dry, imply much more than was actually said, and were, even before his “repentance,” a source of guilt and shame. But, once Stephen begins to assert his individuality, he is able to appreciate beauty according to his own aesthetic, as we see in his ecstatic description of the girl he sees wading in a stream (p. 185). he distances himself from the experience of seeing her as a 'wild angel...of youth and mortal beauty.' (186) His subsequent conversation about fire and beauty with the dean of studies, with Stephen quoting Aquinas, takes on a condescending and insincere tone when compared to this description. Stephen has already found his aesthetic, and the Aquinas quote is a statement of compromise: "Pulcra sunt quae visa placent" leaves Stephen enough room for his individual vision, while passing this fact past the headmaster in the guise of