Our friend was frank and monotonous, making no mystery of his remonstrance and no secret of his predicament.

Her response, whatever it was, always came to the same thing--an implied invitation to him to judge, if he spoke of predicaments, of how much comfort she had in hers.

For him indeed was no comfort even in complaint, since every allusion to what had befallen them but made the author of their trouble more present.

Acton Hague was between them--that was the essence of the matter, and never so much between them as when they were face to face.
Then Stransom, while still wanting to banish him, had the strangest sense of striving for an ease that would involve having accepted him.

Deeply disconcerted by what he knew, he was still worse tormented by really not knowing.