The way in which she turned the conversation brought home to his own expansive, confiding nature a certain austerity and stiffness of fibre in her which for the moment chilled him.

But as he got her into talk about the neighborhood, the people and their ways, the impression vanished again, so far at least, as there was anything repellent about it.

Austerity, strength, individuality, all these words indeed he was more and more driven to apply to her.

She was like no other woman he had ever seen.

It was not at all that she was more remarkable intellectually.