"I cannot imagine it, then!" he affirmed.
Christina flushed faintly; then, very gently, "I am not so bad as you think," she said.
"It is not a question of badness; it is a question of whether circumstances don't make the thing an extreme improbability." "Worse and worse.

I can be bullied, then, or bribed!" "You are not so candid," said Rowland, "as you pretend to be.

My feeling is this.

Hudson, as I understand him, does not need, as an artist, the stimulus of strong emotion, of passion.

He's better without it; he's emotional and passionate enough when he 's left to himself.