He had recouped himself by some ridiculous display of vanity which, as he knew, put him still more at her mercy.

Now that he was alone with her there was no stimulus from outside to draw his attention from his injury.

By a considerable effort of self-control he forced himself to remain silent, and to make himself distinguish what part of his pain was due to vanity, what part to the certainty that no woman really loving him could speak thus.
"What do I feel about Katharine ?" he thought to himself.

It was clear that she had been a very desirable and distinguished figure, the mistress of her little section of the world; but more than that, she was the person of all others who seemed to him the arbitress of life, the woman whose judgment was naturally right and steady, as his had never been in spite of all his culture.

And then he could not see her come into a room without a sense of the flowing of robes, of the flowering of blossoms, of the purple waves of the sea, of all things that are lovely and mutable on the surface but still and passionate in their heart.
"If she were callous all the time and had only led me on to laugh at me I couldn't have felt that about her," he thought.