But I'd only frighten her, I suppose, if she did." Munty Ross had very little of the sentimentalist about him; he was completely cynical about the value of the human heart, and believed in the worth and goodness of no one at all.

He had, for a brief wild moment, been in love with his wife, but she had taken care to kill that, "the earlier the better." "My dear," she would say to a chosen friend, "what Munty's like when he's romantic!" She never, after the first month of their married life together, caught a glimpse of that side of him.
Now, however, he did permit his mind to linger over that vision of his little daughter tumbling on the stairs.

He wondered what had made her do it.

He was astonished at the difference that it made to him.
To Nancy also it had made a great difference.

She wished that she had stayed there on the stairs a little longer to hold a more important conversation.