The statements were familiar to her ears, but there was this which was unfamiliar: they stirred her to passion.
She stepped back, throwing out a hand as if to keep him from her.
"Don't," she whispered.

"Don't!" She spoke like one who is hurt.

Amongst the feelings which had waked in her, dim and for the most part hardly understood, two at all events were clear.

One a vague longing for something different from the banal path she daily trod, the other a poignant regret that she was as she was.
But Linforth caught the hand which she held out to thrust him off, and, clasping it, drew her towards him.
"I love you," he said; and she answered him in desperation: "But you don't know me." "I know that I want you.

I know that I am not fit for you." And Violet Oliver laughed harshly.
But Dick Linforth paid no attention to that laugh.