" That man would
have derided the possibility that he could ever say this thing that he,
still Rodney Aldrich, had just said to Rose--and meant.
To that man, the priceless hour of the day had always been precisely
this one, the first waking hour, when his mind, in the enjoyment of a
sort of clairvoyant limpidity, had been wont to challenge its stiffest
problems, wrestle with them, and whether triumphant or not, despatch him
to his office avid for the day's work and strides ahead of where he had
left it the night before.
He spent that hour very differently now. He spent all his hours, even
the formal working ones, differently. And the terrifying thing was that
he hadn't resisted the change, hadn't wanted to resist, didn't want to
now, as he sat there looking down at her--at the wonderful hair which
framed her face and, in its two thick braids, the incomparable whiteness
of her throat and bosom--at the slumberous glory of her eyes.
So, when she asked him what he was looking so solemn about, he said with
more truth than he pretended to himself, that it was enough to make
anybody solemn to look at her.
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