You don't think my life here so very tame and dull, I know.' 'I do not, indeed,' he said with fervour.

'It must be delightfully poetical, and sparkling, and fresh, and----' 'There you go, Mr.Smith! Well, men of another kind, when I get them to be honest enough to own the truth, think just the reverse: that my life must be a dreadful bore in its normal state, though pleasant for the exceptional few days they pass here.' 'I could live here always!' he said, and with such a tone and look of unconscious revelation that Elfride was startled to find that her harmonies had fired a small Troy, in the shape of Stephen's heart.

She said quickly: 'But you can't live here always.' 'Oh no.' And he drew himself in with the sensitiveness of a snail.
Elfride's emotions were sudden as his in kindling, but the least of woman's lesser infirmities--love of admiration--caused an inflammable disposition on his part, so exactly similar to her own, to appear as meritorious in him as modesty made her own seem culpable in her..