He would ask perhaps half a dozen questions, which he had spent much care in framing with a view to interesting her.

She would reply in monosyllables, with sometimes a constrained smile or two, and then, after sitting a while in silence, he would take his hat and bid her good-evening.
She always sat nowadays in an attitude which he had never seen her adopt in former times, her hands lying in her lap before her, and an absent expression on her face.

As he looked at her sitting thus, and recalled her former vivacious self-assertion and ever-new caprices, he was overcome with the sadness of the contrast.
Whenever he asked her about her health, she replied that she was well; and, indeed, she had that appearance.

Grief is slow to sap the basis of a healthy physical constitution.

She retained all the contour of cheek and rounded fulness of figure which had first captivated his fancy in the days, as it seemed, so long ago.
He took her often to the theatre, because in the action of the play she seemed at times momentarily carried out of herself.