She was the living picture of his youthful vision.

She only could satisfy the Great Emotion....

There was the plan that he had forgotten,--the lunatic plan from which, even in his most desperate moment, he had drawn back, afraid,--to cajole her to the cottage away from which he would send his servants; make, with doors and windows locked, one last passionate appeal, and then, if mocked and held away, to take her with him into death and hold her spirit in his arms.
To own himself beaten by this slip of a girl, to pack his traps and leave her the field and sneak off like a beardless boy,--was that the sort of way he did things who had had merely to raise his voice to hear the approach of obsequious feet?
...

Alice and the yacht and nothing but sea to a blank horizon?
He laughed to think of it.

It was, in fact, unthinkable.
He would put it to Joan in a different way this time.