She was passion, naked and unashamed, and at least real.
And then he would remember that much of this was problematical after all, for they had never kissed as that passion demanded, or at least that he had never so kissed her.

He was not sure of the first.

He knew that he did not understand Julie, but he felt, if he did kiss her, it would be a kiss of surrender, of finality.

He feared to look beyond that, and he could not if he would.
He wrote, then, to Hilda, and he told of the death of Jenks, and of their arrival in Abbeville, "You must understand, dear," he said, "that all this has had a tremendous effect upon me.

In that train all that I had begun to feel about the uselessness of my old religion came to a head.