As he thought of these things, he made up his mind that he would refrain from any sentimental attempt to bridge the impassable gulf between what Gerda was feeling then and what he was feeling.⁠ ⁠… No casual words of easy tenderness should spoil the classical simplicity of their rare encounter! For classical it had been, in its arbitrariness, in its abruptness, in its heroic defiance of so many obstacles; as he had always prayed that any great love-affair of his might be.

Their words to each other, when at length they did break the spell and wander back hand in hand to where they had separated from Lob, were simple and natural⁠—reduced, in fact, to the plain level of prosaic, practical anxieties.