At thirty-one Lovat met people with ease, for they meant little to him,
men or women. Men, outside his own profession, were mere figures to
him. They did n't count. He spoke to them in the chit-chat of the
day, and when they mentioned architecture, he changed the subject
deftly. The alembication of engineering and art they could n't
understand, so why talk of it? Women he didn't mind so much. They had
a soft place in his heart, because they had been good to him as a boy
and child whom there had been few to care for.... And he had had his
little love-affairs, natural as the phases of the moon--calf-love,
sentiment, adoration, passion. They had loitered, knocked, passed by.
None had ever touched that inmost self of him to whom God had once
called and said seriously: "You are to build bridges."
And then he saw Cecily Stanford coming toward him with her serious
shining eyes.