She sighed, teased by desires so incoherent, so incommunicable.
"But isn't it curious," William resumed, "that you should neither feel it for me, nor I for you ?" Katharine agreed that it was curious--very; but even more curious to her was the fact that she was discussing the question with William.

It revealed possibilities which opened a prospect of a new relationship altogether.

Somehow it seemed to her that he was helping her to understand what she had never understood; and in her gratitude she was conscious of a most sisterly desire to help him, too--sisterly, save for one pang, not quite to be subdued, that for him she was without romance.
"I think you might be very happy with some one you loved in that way," she said.
"You assume that romance survives a closer knowledge of the person one loves ?" He asked the question formally, to protect himself from the sort of personality which he dreaded.

The whole situation needed the most careful management lest it should degenerate into some degrading and disturbing exhibition such as the scene, which he could never think of without shame, upon the heath among the dead leaves.

And yet each sentence brought him relief.