Chapter 24

As it turned out, nothing could have been more fortunate for him than this dejected mood. First appearances are everything, and he might easily--so easily--have made an intolerable impression. Indeed, in the cold fit, almost the terror, succeeding the impulse that had caused Phyllis to invite him, she was prepared to find him forward, and perhaps eager to take advantage of her recklessness, and misconstrue it. At the hint of such a thing she would have frozen; and the fact that she would only have had herself to …