For the first time in her two-and-twenty years, Catherine had sensed the power, the virility of a real man--not of the make-believe, manicured and tailored parasites of her own class--and something elemental in her, some urge of primitive womanhood, grappled her to that memory and, all against her will, caused her to live and re-live those moments, time and time again, as the most strange and vital of her life.
Yet, it was not this physical call alone, in her, that had awakened her being.

The man's eyes, and mouth and hair, true, all remained with her as a subtly compelling lure; his strength and straight directness seemed to conquer her and draw her to him; but beyond all this, something in his speech, in his ideas and the strange reticence that had so puzzled her, kept him even more constantly in her wondering thoughts.
"A workingman," she murmured to herself, in uncomprehending revery, "he said he was a workingman--and he knew that I was very, very rich.

He knew my father would have rewarded him magnificently, given him money, work, anything he might have asked.

And yet, and yet--he would not even tell his name.

And he refused to know mine! He didn't want to know! His pride--why, in all my life, among all the proud, rich people that I've known, I've never found such pride as that!" She reflected what would have happened had any man of the usual type rescued her, even a man of wealth and position.