"But nowadays we've reversed the process.

One makes sure of the Princess first, lest when the dragon is killed she should prove to have gone away with one of the bystanders." Something that clicked in Peter's mind led him to look sharply from one to the other of the two women.

In Bloombury they had a way, he knew, of not missing any point of their neighbours' affairs, but their faces expressed no trace of an appreciation of anything in the subject being applicable to his.

The flick of memory passed and left him wondering why it should be.
He caught himself looking covertly at the girl as the gondola swung into open water, to discover in her the springs of an experience such as lay at the source of his own desolation.

He perceived instead under her slight appearance a certain warmth and colour like a light behind a breathed-on window-pane.