The presence of this immense and enduring beauty made her almost alarmingly conscious of her desire, and at the same time proud of a feeling which did not display anything like the same proportions when she was going about her daily work.
She repressed her impulse to speak aloud, and rose and wandered about rather aimlessly among the statues until she found herself in another gallery devoted to engraved obelisks and winged Assyrian bulls, and her emotion took another turn.

She began to picture herself traveling with Ralph in a land where these monsters were couchant in the sand.

"For," she thought to herself, as she gazed fixedly at some information printed behind a piece of glass, "the wonderful thing about you is that you're ready for anything; you're not in the least conventional, like most clever men." And she conjured up a scene of herself on a camel's back, in the desert, while Ralph commanded a whole tribe of natives.
"That is what you can do," she went on, moving on to the next statue.
"You always make people do what you want." A glow spread over her spirit, and filled her eyes with brightness.
Nevertheless, before she left the Museum she was very far from saying, even in the privacy of her own mind, "I am in love with you," and that sentence might very well never have framed itself.

She was, indeed, rather annoyed with herself for having allowed such an ill-considered breach of her reserve, weakening her powers of resistance, she felt, should this impulse return again.

For, as she walked along the street to her office, the force of all her customary objections to being in love with any one overcame her.