Presently he shivered slightly.

He leaned his elbows on his knees and his forehead in his hands and sat still.
Alexander! He felt no hot straining toward meeting, toward fighting, Alexander.

Perversely enough, after a year of impatient, contemptuous thought in that direction, he had lately felt liking and an ancient strong respect returning like a tide that was due.

And he could not meet Alexander in April--that was impossible! No private affair could be attended to now.
...

Elspeth, of whom the letter carried no word, Elspeth from whom he had not heard since in August he left that countryside, Elspeth who had agreed with him that love of man and woman was nobody's business but their own, Elspeth who, when he would go, had let him go with a fine pale refusal to deal in women's tears and talk of injury, who had said, indeed, that she did not repent, much bliss being worth some bale--Elspeth whom he could not be sure that he would see again, but whom at times before his eyes at night he saw....