The strange and endless courtship of Wannop and Tietjens - Parade's End

As anticipated, the third section of volume 3 of Ford Madox Ford's Parade's End brings together the first two sections: that is, the first was Valentine Wannop on Armistice Day, just getting word that her long-lost crush, Tietjens, was in London, essentially dispossessed by his estranged wife, and suffering from shell shock or some kind of war-induced madness (she had not heard from him for two years, but, like him, as it turns out, was clinging to memories of the two nights, some years apart, that they spent together and almost but not quite had sex); the 2nd section was from Tietjens's POV, in the trenches, just up to the point where he was knocked semiconscious by a German rocket, and one of his subordinate officers was nearly crushed to death and lost sight in one eye (which was his greatest fear. Now, in 3rd and final section, Valentine rushes off to find T in his apt or house in Lincoln's Inn, I think - when she finds him he's very flustered, invites her in, runs off carrying a piece of furniture or something that he wants to sell, she can tell he's disturbed and is not even sure if he recognized her (she doesn't know how much he has been fantasizing about her over past two years - but is reluctant to come on to her bcz she's the daughter of his father's best friend [ so what?] and perhaps also bcz he's still married and doesn't want to sully her pure reputation?). She wanders around the house, waits for his return, takes a phone call from her mother, who somehow knew she'd be there and wants her to look out for T., who had been their benefactor during their extreme poverty in wartime. FMF doesn't give much description of the celebration of Armistice Day, but this reunion of the two main characters, after many years apart, is strangely haunting - she so anticipatory and he so strange and unemotional and in fact unable to express the many thoughts that we saw running through his mind during his time in trench warfare. He'd said, quite oddly I thought, that his real desire was to engage, with VW, in a long conversation - maybe that's just a reaction to his difficult wife, but it seems to me also very naive and even repressed, unable to recognize or act upon his deep physical attraction to VW. Understanding that he wants her as a partner, soul mate, an equal as a thinker and iconoclast, he also seems to have no idea as to how to win her to a loving, sexual relationship, what steps to take.