He had loved one woman, and one only--with a love like a deep wound; he had longed for a son; he had stubbornly undertaken to protect a creature he felt life had treated unfairly.

The shattering of the old world had stirred in him a powerful interest in the future of the new one whose foundations were yet to be laid.

The combination of these things might lead to curious developments.
They sat and talked long and the developments were perhaps more unusual than she had imagined they might be.
"If I had been able to express the something which approached affection which I felt for Donal, he would have found out that my limitations were not deliberately evil proclivities," was one of the things he said.

"One day he would have ended by making a clean breast of it.

He was afraid of me.