She was at first too absorbed in the consideration of the programme to heed him, but when she at last glanced at him he took advantage of the movement to speak to her, greeting her with the remark that he felt as if he already knew her.
She smiled as she said "Oh yes, I recognise you"; yet in spite of this admission of long acquaintance it was the first he had seen of her smile.
The effect of it was suddenly to contribute more to that acquaintance than all the previous meetings had done.

He hadn't "taken in," he said to himself, that she was so pretty.

Later, that evening--it was while he rolled along in a hansom on his way to dine out--he added that he hadn't taken in that she was so interesting.

The next morning in the midst of his work he quite suddenly and irrelevantly reflected that his impression of her, beginning so far back, was like a winding river that had at last reached the sea.
His work in fact was blurred a little all that day by the sense of what had now passed between them.

It wasn't much, but it had just made the difference.