He could not but feel for Stella, who had passed through the same furnace.

He could not but grieve that the wondrous book of which he was racing through the first pages had been closed for her by him.

Might she not open it again, some time, with another at her side?
"Wub, tell me what you have been doing all these years," she said.
He began the tale of them in the short, reluctant, colloquial phrases which the English use to strip their achievements of any romantic semblance until Millicent Splay sailed across the room and claimed him for a table of bridge.
"He will be safer there," she said to herself.
"Yes, but she had to take him away," Stella's thoughts responded.

She was dangerous then in Millie Splay's judgment.

The sweet flattery set Stella smiling.