He felt a certain trepidation as he reflected that she might come in with the knowledge of his supreme admiration and of the project he had built upon it in her eyes; but the feeling was not disagreeable.

Her face could wear no look that would make it less beautiful, and he was sure beforehand that however she might take the proposal he had in reserve, she would not take it in scorn or in irony.

He had a feeling that if she could only read the bottom of his heart and measure the extent of his good will toward her, she would be entirely kind.
She came in at last, after so long an interval that he wondered whether she had been hesitating.

She smiled with her usual frankness, and held out her hand; she looked at him straight with her soft and luminous eyes, and said, without a tremor in her voice, that she was glad to see him and that she hoped he was well.

He found in her what he had found before--that faint perfume of a personal shyness worn away by contact with the world, but the more perceptible the more closely you approached her.