He had found out that he loved her only in time to feel the wrench of parting from her all the more keenly.

What was he to do with himself after she was gone?
What could he turn to in order to fill up the great emptiness that her going would leave in his daily life?
And was she never to know how dear she was to him?
Why not speak to her, why not tell her that he loved her?
But Condy knew that Blix did not love him, and the knowledge of that must keep him silent; he must hug his secret to him, like the Spartan boy with his stolen fox, no matter how grievously it hurt him to do so.

He and Blix had lived through two months of rarest, most untroubled happiness, with hardly more self-consciousness than two young and healthy boys.

To bring that troublous, disquieting element of love between them--unrequited love, of all things--would be a folly.

She would tell him--must in all honesty tell him that she did not love him, and all their delicious camaraderie would end in a "scene." Condy, above everything, wished to look back on those two months, after she had gone, without being able to remember therein one single note that jarred.