It was none the less his inconsequence that while he had himself been enjoying for weeks the view of the brilliant woman's specific action, he just suffered from any characterisation of it by other lips.

"I think tremendously well of her, at the same time that I seem to feel her 'life' to be really none of my business.

It's my business, that is, only so far as Chad's own life is affected by it; and what has happened, don't you see?
is that Chad's has been affected so beautifully.

The proof of the pudding's in the eating"-- he tried, with no great success, to help it out with a touch of pleasantry, while she let him go on as if to sink and sink.

He went on however well enough, as well as he could do without fresh counsel; he indeed shouldn't stand quite firm, he felt, till he should have re-established his communications with Chad.