This had made me take everything else for granted, and the noisy American world had deafened my care to possible contradictions.

Her spectacles were at present a direct contradiction; they seemed a negation not only of new relationships but of every old one as well.

I remember nevertheless that when after a moment she walked beside me on the grass I found myself nervously hoping she wouldn't as yet at any rate tell me anything very dreadful; so that to stave off this danger I harried her with questions about Mrs.Meldrum and, without waiting for replies, became profuse on the subject of my own doings.

My companion was finely silent, and I felt both as if she were watching my nervousness with a sort of sinister irony and as if I were talking to some different and strange person.

Flora plain and obscure and dumb was no Flora at all.