-Starting with guilty consciousness, Curtis turned sharply around, and his glance fell on the intruder.
Hi: could someone explain to me what "starting with guilty consciousness" mean in the sentence above?
That is from a book published in 1904. You should not read anything from before, oh, 1920 if you want it to be easily decipherable. You can be conscious of your guilt, meaning that you know you did the bad thing.
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That is from a book published in 1904. You should not read anything from before, oh, 1920 if you want it to be easily decipherable.
You can be conscious of your guilt, meaning that you know you did the bad thing. You can also have a guilty conscience, which means that you feel guilty all the time. This "guilty consciousness" sounds to the modern ear like an ill-considered mishmash of the