It was as if the very essence of his soul floated there, a variable and fluid quantity, forever changing form and colour beneath the shallow ripples of his personality.

She had seen him in many moods, but never in this one.

Did he possess a deeper subtlety than she had imagined or was it the sincerity of his nature that defied analysis?
"Did you enjoy yourself ?" she asked cheerfully.

Tell me about it." "Oh, it was rather jolly," he replied, and she knew that this was as much as she should ever get out of him.

Beyond a few stock phrases, words hardly existed for him at all, or existed only in foreign languages, for, having been educated abroad, he spoke French and German fluently, if without felicity.