She was stringing her hand to strike a blow as men strike, and women when they do that cannot be quite feminine.
'How dull the streets are,' she remarked.
'They are, just now,' said Ammiani, thinking of them on the night to come convulsed with strife, and of her, tossed perhaps like a weed along the torrent of bloody deluge waters.

Her step was so firm, her face so assured, that he could not fancy she realized any prospect of the sort, and it filled him with pity and a wretched quailing.
If I speak now I shall be talking like a coward, he said to himself: and he was happily too prudent to talk to her in that strain.

So he said nothing of peace and safety.

She was almost at liberty to believe that he approved the wisdom of her resolution.

At the maestro's door she thanked him for his escort, and begged for it further within an hour.
'And do bring me some chocolate.' She struck her teeth together champing in a pretty hunger for it.