"A person who has borne living in the house with a flute may be said to have unlimited powers of endurance." She moved forward and Kemper, while he sprang to his feet and stood waiting for the introduction, became swiftly aware that with her entrance the whole atmosphere had taken a fresher and a finer quality.
The sophistication of the world, the flippant irony of Gerty's voice gave place immediately before her earnest dignity and before the look of large humanity which distinguished her so vitally from the women whom he knew.

He felt her sincerity of purpose at the same instant that he felt Gerty's shallowness and the artificial glamour of the hot-house air in which he had hardly drawn breath.

There was an appeal in Laura's face which he had never seen before--an expression which seemed to him to draw directly from the elemental pulse; and he felt suddenly that there were depths of consciousness which he had never sounded, vivid experiences which he had never even glimpsed.

"She is different--but how is she different ?" he asked himself, perplexed.

"Is she simply a bigger personality, or is she really more of a woman than any woman I have ever known?
What is it in her that speaks to me and what is it in myself that responds ?" And it seemed to him both strange and wonderful that he should be drawn by an impulse which was not the impulse of love--that a woman should attract him through qualities which were independent of the allurement of sex.