Because I could not be with you....

But I am tired of it, and I thought it better that you should know it--after all these years." Utterly confounded, she leaned back, both hands tightening on the hand-rail behind her, and as she comprehended the passionless reproof, a stinging flush deepened over her pretty face.
"Had you anything else to say to me ?" he asked, without embarrassment.
"N-no." "Then may I take my departure ?" She lifted her startled blue eyes and regarded him with a new and intense curiosity.
"Have I, by my manner or speech, ever really hurt you ?" she asked.
"Because I haven't meant to." He started to reply, hesitated, shook his head, and his pleasant, kindly smile fascinated her.
"You haven't intended to," he said.

"It's all right, Rosalie----" "But--have I been horrid and disagreeable?
Tell me." In his troubled eyes she could see he was still searching to excuse her; slowly she began to recognise the sensitive simplicity of the man, the innate courtesy so out of harmony with her experience among men.

What, after all, was there about him that a woman should treat with scant consideration, impatience, the toleration of contempt?
His clumsy manner?
His awkwardness?
His very slowness to exact anything for himself?
Or had it been the half-sneering, half-humourous attitude of her husband toward him which had insensibly coloured her attitude?
She had known Delancy Grandcourt all her life--that is, she had neglected to know him, if this brief revelation of himself warranted the curiosity and interest now stirring her.
"Were you really ever in love with me ?" she asked, so frankly that the painful colour rose to his hair again, and he stood silent, head lowered, like a guilty boy caught in his sins.
"But--good heavens!" she exclaimed with an uneasy little laugh, "there's nothing to be ashamed of in it! I'm not laughing at you, Delancy; I am thinking about it with--with a certain re--" She was going to say regret, but she substituted "respect," and, rather surprised at her own seriousness, she fell silent, her uncertain gaze continually reverting to him.
She had never before noticed how tall and well-built he was, in spite of the awkwardness with which he moved--a great, big powerful machine, continually checked and halted, as though by some fear that his own power might break loose and smash things.

That seemed to be the root of his awkwardness--unskilful self-control--a vague consciousness of the latent strength of limb and body and will, which habit alone controlled, and controlled unskilfully.
She had never before known a man resembling this new revelation of Grandcourt.