`You're the sort who can't know anyone intimately.' is the reasoning which Lucy gives for the breaking off of her engagement with Cecil, following her encounter with George Emerson when Lucy, in the presence of Charlotte, claims that she no longer wishes to see George again: `Go out of this house, and never come into it again as long as I live here'. The relevance of Lucy's conversation had implications of her realisation that it was in fact Mr George Emerson whom she desired to be with.

As Lucy holds this conversation with Cecil, she subconsciously repeats to him what George previously tells her `you were all right as long as you kept to things'. The effect of this culminated in the feeling that Forster has chosen this moment to imply that Lucy is realising within her that she loves George Emerson, yet she is not prepared...