human
him with a conscientious thoroughness that might have been trying to an artistic temperament, had he not got a good deal of genuine interest out of the process himself; interest, and even more. She had soft little confiding ways, like a friendly child's, combined with the queerest flashes of cool understanding, anything but childlike, which kept him rather in awe of her innocent vision. Indeed, that the affair went no further than it did was due perhaps to Joan's perfectly unconscious habit of withdrawing herself to see what was going on, of being