It seemed so strange to her now that she could have failed in doing so.

But all this time it was only as a might-have-been that she thought of loving him, as one who feels himself mortally sick thinks of what he might have done when he was well, as a life-convict thinks of what he might have done when free, as a disembodied spirit might think of what it might have done when living.

The consciousness of her disgrace, ever with her, had, in the past month or two, built up an impassable wall between her past life and her present state of existence.

She no longer thought of herself in the present tense, still less the future.
He had not kissed her since that kiss at their first interview, which threw her into such a paroxysm of weeping.

But one evening, when she had been more silent and dull than usual, and more unresponsive to his efforts to interest her, as he rose to go he drew her a moment to his side and pressed his lips to hers, as if constrained to find some expression for the tenderness so cruelly balked of any outflow in words.
He went quickly out, but she continued to stand motionless, in the attitude of one startled by a sudden discovery.