A world of inflammable lovers of the Romeo and Juliet type would very soon end in barbarism and misery.

But it is a fact that in every man (not in every woman) there lives a lover; a lover who is called out in all his potentialities often by the most insignificant little things--as long as they come at the psychological moment: the glimpse of a face at an unusual angle, an evanescent attitude, the curve of a cheek often looked at before, perhaps, but then, at the moment, charged with astonishing significance.

These are great mysteries, of course.

Magic signs.
I don't know in what the sign consisted in this case.

It might have been her pallor (it wasn't pasty nor yet papery) that white face with eyes like blue gleams of fire and lips like red coals.