Indeed, the significance she held for him was rather that, though she was a girl, she presented none of the embarrassments which that sex had always held for him.

She grew in comradeship; he found himself as much at ease with her as with her brother, and her charm was just that which had so quickly and strongly attracted Michael to Hermann.

She was vivid in the same way as he was; she had the same warm, welcoming kindliness--the same complete absence of pose.

You knew where you were with her, and hitherto, when Michael was with one of the young ladies brought down to Ashbridge to be looked at, he only wished that wherever he was he was somewhere else.

But with Sylvia he had none of this self-consciousness; she was bonne camarade for him in exactly the same way as she was bonne camarade to the rest of the multitude which thronged the Sunday evenings, perfectly at ease with them, as they with her, in relationship entirely unsentimental.
But through these weeks, up to this foggy November afternoon, Michael's most conscious preoccupation was his music.