And its effect upon Guy was of an oddly bracing nature.

The semi-defiant air dropped from him.

Though still subdued, his manner showed no embarrassment.

He even, as time passed, became in a sardonic fashion almost jocose.
In company with Burke, he drank lager-beer, and he betrayed not the smallest desire to drink too much.

Furtively she watched him throughout the meal, trying to adjust her impressions, trying to realize him as the lover to whom she had been faithful for so long, the lover who had written those always tender, though quite uncommunicative letters, the lover, who had cabled her his welcome, and then had so completely and so cruelly failed her.
Her ideas of him were a whirl of conflicting notions which utterly bewildered her.