Then I will go North if there is anything needed to be done there which human beings can do." She looked at him steadfastly.
"That is what I am afraid of," she said.
Roland Clewe did not immediately speak.

To him Margaret Raleigh was two persons.

She was a woman of business, earnest, thoughtful, helpful, generous, and wise; a woman with whom he worked, consulted, planned, who made it possible for him to carry on the researches and enterprises to which he had devoted his life.

But, more than this, she was another being; she was a woman he loved, with a warm, passionate love, which grew day by day, and which a year ago had threatened to break down every barrier of prudence, and throw him upon his knees before her as a humiliated creature who had been pretending to love knowledge, philosophy, and science, but in reality had been loving beauty and riches.

It was the fear of this catastrophe which had had a strong influence in taking him to Europe.
But now, by some magical influence--an influence which he was not sure he understood--that first woman, the woman of business, his partner, his co-worker, had disappeared, and there sat before him the woman he loved.