I could never touch Betty in those days without dreading lest I might soil her feathers.

You may laugh at a hulking brute like me saying such things, but that's the way I saw Betty, that's the way I felt towards her.

I could no more have taken her into my bear's hug and kissed her roughly than I could have smashed a child down with my fist.
And yet--My God, man! how I ached for her!" Long as I had loved Betty in a fatherly way, deeply as I loved her now, the man's unexpected picture of her was a revelation.

You see it was only after her marriage, when she had softened and grown a woman and come so near me that I felt the great comfort of her presence when she was by, the need of it when she was away.

How could I have known anything of the elusiveness in her maidenhood before which he knelt so reverently?
That he so knelt is the keynote of the man's soul untainted by the flesh.
It made clear to me the tenderness that lay beneath that which was brutal; the reason of that personal charm which had captivated me against my will; his defencelessness against the Furies.
So far the narrative has reached the latter part of June.