She owned that to herself, and she got what comfort she could from his making the affair a question of what Burnamy had done to Stoller rather than of what Burnamy had said to her, and what she had answered him.

If she was not perfectly clear as to what she wanted to do, or wished to have happen, there was now time and place in which she could delay and make sure.

The accepted theory of such matters is that people know their minds from the beginning, and that they do not change them.
But experience seems to contradict this theory, or else people often act contrary to their convictions and impulses.

If the statistics were accessible, it might be found that many potential engagements hovered in a doubtful air, and before they touched the earth in actual promise were dissipated by the play of meteorological chances.
When General Triscoe put down his napkin in rising he said that he would step round to Pupp's and see if Stoller were still there.

But on the way he stepped up to Mrs.Adding's hotel on the hill, and he came back, after an interval which he seemed not to have found long, to report rather casually that Stoller had left Carlsbad the day before.