"Besides, somehow I am always aware of reserved and hidden forces in you—of a character which I only partly know and admire—capabilities, capacities of which I am ignorant except that, intuitively, I seem to know they are part of you."
"Am I as complex as that to you?"
"Sometimes," he admitted. "You are just now for example. But usually you are only a wonderfully interesting and charming girl who brings out the best side of me and keeps me amused and happy every moment that I am with you."
"There really is not much more to me than that," she said in a low voice. "You sum me up—a gay source of amusement: nothing more."
"Athalie, you know you are more vital than that to me."
"No, I don't know it."
"You do! You know it in your own heart. You know that it is a straight, clean, ardent friendship that inspires me and—" she looked up, serious, and very quiet.
—"You know," he continued impulsively, "that it is not only your beauty, your loveliness and grace and that inexplicable charm you seem to radiate, that brings me to seek you every time that I have a moment to do so.
"Why, if it were that alone, it would all have been merely a matter of sentiment. Have I ever been sentimental with you?"
"No."