The slightest grossness made her recoil almost in anguish.

Her brothers were brutal, but never coarse in speech.

The men did all the discussing of farm matters outside.

But, perhaps, because of the continual business of birth and of begetting which goes on upon every farm, Miriam was the more hypersensitive to the matter, and her blood was chastened almost to disgust of the faintest suggestion of such intercourse.

Paul took his pitch from her, and their intimacy went on in an utterly blanched and chaste fashion.