From many signs, she understood how deeply the humiliation of the scene at Sicamous had entered into a proud man's blood.

Others might forget; he remembered.

Moreover, that sense of responsibility--partial responsibility at least--for his father's guilt and degradation, of which he had spoken to her at Glacier, had, she perceived, gone deep with him.

It had strengthened a stern and melancholy view of life, inclining him to turn away from personal joy, to an exclusive concern with public duties and responsibilities.
And this whole temper had no doubt been increased by his perception of the Gaddesdens' place in English society.

He dared not--he would not--ask a woman so reared in the best that England had to give, now that he understood what that best might be, to renounce it all in favour of what he had to offer.