perhaps because she had never really seen him--only in outline, half wrapped in shadows, or merely silhouetted against a weirdly lighted background.

His appearance had no tangible reality for her.

She was in love with an ideal, not with a man ...

he was merely the mouthpiece of an individuality which was of her own creation.
Added to all this there was the sense of isolation.

She had lost her mother when she was a baby; her father fell at Naseby.