He had imagined that she was a woman of few words, but after a faint attempt at conversation he found that he had relapsed into silence, and that it was she who was talking.

Presently the heavy cloud upon his brain lifted.

His strained face relaxed.

She glanced at him, and continued her little monologue.
Her face had brightened.
He had dreaded this dinner-party, this first essay to preserve his balance in public with his frightful invisible burden; but he was getting through it better than he had expected.
"I have come back to what is called society," Rachel was saying, "after nearly seven years of an exile something like Nebuchadnezzar's, and there are two things which I find as difficult as Kipling's 'silly sailors' found their harps 'which they twanged unhandily.'" "Is small talk one of them ?" asked Hugh.

"It has always been a difficulty to me." "On the contrary," said Rachel.