Curson, after his first good-natured impulse, had retained no wish to regain Teresa, whom he felt he no longer loved, and yet who, for that very reason perhaps, had awakened his chivalrous instincts.

Low, equally on his side, was altogether unconscious of any feeling which might grow into a passion, and prevent him from letting her go with another if for her own safety.

They were both men of a certain taste and refinement.

Yet, in spite of all this, some vague instinct of the baser male animal remained with them, and they were moved to a mutually aggressive attitude in the presence of the female.
One word more, and the opening chapter of a sylvan Iliad might have begun.

But this modern Helen saw it coming, and arrested it with an inspiration of feminine genius.