vocabulary to express or imagination to conceive.

Contrary to all her forebodings, Loretta found that she was not unhappy at
Santa Clara. Truly, Billy wrote to her every day, but his letters were
less distressing than his presence. Also, the ordeal of being away from
Daisy was not so severe as she had expected. For the first time in her
life she was not lost in eclipse in the blaze of Daisy's brilliant and
mature personality. Under such favourable circumstances Loretta came
rapidly to the front, while Mrs. Hemingway modestly and shamelessly
retreated into the background.

Loretta began to discover that she was not a pale orb shining by
reflection. Quite unconsciously she became a small centre of things. When
she was at the piano, there was some one to turn the pages for her and to
express preferences for certain songs. When she dropped her handkerchief,
there was some one to pick it up. And there was some one to accompany her
in ramblings and flower gatherings. Also, she learned to cast flies in
still pools and below savage riffles, and how not to entangle silk lines
and gut-leaders with the shrubbery.

Jack Hemingway did not care to teach beginners, and fished much by himself,
or not at all, thus giving Ned Bashford ample time in which to consider
Loretta as an appearance. As such, she was all that his philosophy
demanded. Her blue eyes had the direct gaze of a boy, and out of his
profundity he delighted in them and forbore to shudder at the duplicity his
philosophy bade him to believe lurked in their depths. She had the grace
of a slender flower, the fragility of colour and line of fine china, in all
of which he pleasured greatly, without thought of the Life Force
palpitating beneath and in spite of Bernard Shaw--in whom he believed.