The fire of him was no longer warm, and the fear of him was no longer poignant.
Later, at the piano, she played for him, and at him, aggressively, with the vague intent of emphasizing the impassableness of the gulf that separated them.

Her music was a club that she swung brutally upon his head; and though it stunned him and crushed him down, it incited him.

He gazed upon her in awe.

In his mind, as in her own, the gulf widened; but faster than it widened, towered his ambition to win across it.

But he was too complicated a plexus of sensibilities to sit staring at a gulf a whole evening, especially when there was music.