He drew back a little, as if he disliked it.

His feeling for her almost amounted to a repugnance.
"I thought you might like to hear that he is well," she said gently.

She was reading the address on the envelope, and again he saw that look of concentrated gravity which made him feel uneasy for reasons of his own.
"It is very kind of you to throw me even that crumb from your richly-stored intellectual table.

I am very glad to hear that he is well.

A whole long letter from him must be a treat indeed." She thought of a proverb relating to the grapes that are out of reach, but said nothing.
It was the fashion that year to wear little flyaway jackets with a coquettish pocket on each side.