pleasantly familiar?

Strange thoughts over a teacup, MacRae decided. It seemed even more
strange that he should be considering such intimately personal things in
the very act of carrying on an impersonal triangular conversation; as if
there were two of him present, one being occupied in the approved teacup
manner while the other sat by speculating with a touch of moroseness
upon distressingly important potentialities. This duality persisted in
functioning even when Betty looked at her watch and said, "I must go."

He walked with her around to the head of the Cove. He had not wanted to
do that,--and still he did. He found himself filled with an intense and
resentful curiosity about this calm, self-possessed young woman. He
wondered if she really had any power to hurt him, if there resided in
her any more potent charm than other women possessed, or if it were a
mere sentimental befogging of his mind due to the physical propinquity
of her at a time when he was weak and bruised and helpless. He could
feel the soft warmth of her hands yet, and without even closing his eyes
he could see her reddish-brown hair against the white of his bed covers
and the tired droop of her body as she slept that night.

Curiously enough, before they were well clear of the Ferrara house they
had crossed swords. Courteously, to be sure. MacRae could not afterward
recall clearly how it began,--something about the war and the
after-effect of the war. British Columbia nowise escaped the muddle into
which the close of the war and the wrangle of the peacemakers had
plunged both industry and politics. There had been a recent labor
disturbance in Vancouver in which demobilized soldiers had played a
part.

"You can't blame these men much. They're bewildered at some of the
things they get up against, and exasperated by others. A lot of them
have found the going harder at home than it was in France. A lot of
promises and preachments don't fit in with performance since the guns
have stopped talking. I suppose that doesn't seem reasonable to people
like you," MacRae found himself saying. "You don't have to gouge and
claw a living out of the world. Or at least, if there is any gouging
and clawing to be done, you are not personally involved in it. You get
it done by proxy."

Betty flushed slightly.

"Do you always go about with a chip on your shoulder?" she asked. "I
should think you did enough fighting in France."

"I learned to fight there," he said