Though he had been so eager to make light of his services to her in her trouble, she was amused from time to time by a childlike vanity which prompted him to impress her with the value of small attentions; and this she was swift to recognize as the opposite of Arthur's delicacy.

It was the only littleness she had observed in O'Hara so far--this reluctance to hide his smaller lights under a bushel--and in its place, it was amusing.

Here was an obvious instance where nature unassisted by training appeared to fall short.
"They couldn't be lovelier if you'd gone all over the world," she responded sincerely.
Before answering her he hesitated a moment, and she watched pityingly the struggle he was making toward an impossible self-expression.

The thing he wanted to say, the thing struggling so pathetically in the inarticulateness of his feeling, would not, she knew, be uttered in words.
"You are the first woman I ever wanted to send flowers to," he said presently; and added with abject infelicity: "It's strange, isn't it ?" "Yes, it's strange," she assented pleasantly.

Though his words were ineffectual, she was aware suddenly of a force before which she felt a vague impulse of flight.