Yet the light, just visibly forced smile with which his companion had listened to him died away, and she sat looking at him with her lips parted and her face as solemn as a tragic mask.

There was evidently something very painful to her in the scene to which he was subjecting her, and yet her impatience of it found no angry voice.
Newman wondered whether he was hurting her; he could not imagine why the liberal devotion he meant to express should be disagreeable.

He got up and stood before her, leaning one hand on the chimney-piece.

"I know I have seen you very little to say this," he said, "so little that it may make what I say seem disrespectful.

That is my misfortune! I could have said it the first time I saw you.