I suppose that you don't object to that, do you ?" "Miss Fregelius, my son is a man advancing towards middle age.

It is entirely a point for you and him to decide, and I will only say that I have every confidence in you." "Thank you," she answered, and turning, walked rapidly down the lonely beach till her figure melted into the gathering gloom of the winter's night.

Once, however, when she thought that she was out of eyeshot, he saw her stop with her face towards the vast and bitter sea, and saw also that she was wringing her hands in an agony of the uttermost despair.
"She looks like a ghost," said the Colonel aloud with a little shiver, "like a helpless, homeless ghost, with the world behind her and the infinite in front, and nothing to stand on but a patch of shifting sand, wet with her own tears." When the Colonel grew thus figurative and poetical it may be surmised by anyone who has taken the trouble to study his mixed and somewhat worldly character that he was deeply moved.

And he was moved; more so, indeed, than he had been since the death of his wife.

Why?
He would have found it hard to explain.