In support of this pleasing fiction he set about his courtship with infinite precautions.

He found himself exaggerating Anne's distance and the lapse of intimacy.

He made his way slowly, through all the recognised degrees, from mere acquaintance, through friendship to permissible fervour.
And from time to time, with incomparable discretion, he would withhold himself that he might make himself more precious.

He was hardly aware of his own restraint, his refinements of instinct and of mood.

It was as if he drew, in his desperate necessity, upon unrealised, untried resources.
There was something in Anne that checked the primitive impulse of swift chase, and called forth the curious half-feminine cunning of the sophisticated pursuer.