I have never met a woman that affected me as she does." He sighed again.

In spite of the loyalty to which he believed himself fully committed, Stella Wildmere, with her Wall Street complications, her variegated experience as to adorers, and her present questionable diplomacy, seemed rather faded beside this girl, upon whose heart the dew still rested.
For the first time the thought passed consciously through his mind, "Stella has never made me so happy as I have been the last few hours.
More than that, she never gave life an aspect so rich, sweet, and full of noble possibility.

Madge makes blase, shallow cynicism impossible in a fellow." As he danced with Miss Wildmere that evening, or sauntered with her on the piazza or through secluded paths, the same tendency to comparisons tormented him.

He could not make himself believe that Miss Wildmere's words were like the flow of a clear, bubbling spring, pure and sweet.
There was in them a sediment, the product of a life which had passed through channels more and more distasteful to contemplate.
The next day he went to town to look after some business matters, and returned by the latest train.

To his surprise he found Madge absent, and was immediately conscious of a vague sense of disappointment..