Gentleness in passion! What could have been more seductive to the scared, starved heart of that girl?
Perhaps had he been violent, she might have told him that what she came down to keep was the tryst of death--not of love.

It occurred to me as I looked at her, young, fragile in aspect, and intensely alive in her quietness, that perhaps she did not know herself then what sort of tryst she was coming down to keep.
She smiled faintly, almost awkwardly as if she were totally unused to smiling, at my cheap jocularity.

Then she said with that forced precision, a sort of conscious primness: "I didn't want him to know." I approved heartily.

Quite right.

Much better.