"The real secret is, not that I wind you around my finger, but that you don't want to hurt my feelings. I find something to wonder at, too. When I am with you--even when you are anywhere near me, I am totally different. Alone, I am capable of withdrawing wholly within myself. I am self-absorbed and concentrated. With you I am never wholly within myself. I am, seemingly, partly in your consciousness."
Alice shook her head. "It is true," he persisted. "It is one of the consequences of love; to be drawn out of one's self. I have it." He turned to her, questioningly, "Can you understand it?"
"I think so."
"But do you ever feel it?"
"Sometimes."
"Never, of course, for me?"
"Sometimes."
CHAPTER XXIX
"This is a courtship without any spring," said Dolly one night to her husband. They were discussing her brother and Alice. "At first it was all winter, now it is all summer."
She thought they showed themselves together too much in public, and their careless intimacy was, in fact, outwardly unrestrained.