He had not dared quite to face her, but had written to her, asking her to marry him.

He had her reply somewhere now; it had cut deeper than she ever knew or would know.

She wrote that the time had been when she might have married him even had he asked her by letter, but it was too late now.

The man she might have loved was dead.
He had gone to see her then, but had found what she said was true.

She was more beautiful than when he had last seen her--so beautiful that the charm of her maturity had almost eclipsed in his mind the memory of her girlish loveliness.