He cast far back into the past, and caught a little girl who had worn this same wistful face when she admired him most.

He compared those two faces of the anxious girl and the serene woman, and in the wistfulness that sometimes lay on them both they looked alike.

Was it possible that the fear of him which the years had driven out of the girl still lived a ghost's life to haunt the woman?
At once he overflowed with pity.

As a boy he had exulted in Grizel's fear of him; as a man he could feel only the pain of it.

There was no one, he thought, less to be dreaded of a woman than he; oh, so sure Tommy was of that! And he must lay this ghost; he gave his whole heart to the laying of it.
Few men, and never a woman, could do a fine thing so delicately as he; but of course it included a divergence from the truth, for to Tommy afloat on a generous scheme the truth was a buoy marking sunken rocks.
She had feared him in her childhood, as he knew well; he therefore proceeded to prove to her that she had never feared him.