He accepted with gratitude the theory of his languor--which moreover was real enough and partly perhaps why he was so sensitive; he let himself go as a convalescent, let her insist on the weakness always left by fever.

It helped him to gain time, to preserve the spell even while he talked of breaking it; saw him through slow strolls and soft sessions, long gossips, fitful hopeless questions--there was so much more to tell than, by any contortion, she COULD--and explanations addressed gallantly and patiently to her understanding, but not, by good fortune, really reaching it.

They were perfectly at cross-purposes, and it was the better, and they wandered together in the silver haze with all communication blurred.
When they sat in the sun in her formal garden he quite knew how little even the tenderest consideration failed to disguise his treating her as the most exquisite of curiosities.

The term of comparison most present to him was that of some obsolete musical instrument.

The old-time order of her mind and her air had the stillness of a painted spinnet that was duly dusted, gently rubbed, but never tuned nor played on.