The sisters, he knew, had not been good correspondents; and he almost wished that she might not know it.

"I should not care to be talking to her about Florence," he said to himself.
It was very strange that they should come to meet in such a way, after all that had passed between them in former days.

Would it occur to her that he was the only man she had ever loved?
For, of course, as he well knew, she had never loved her husband.

Or would she now be too callous to everything but the outer world to think at all of such a subject?
She had said that she was aged, and he could well believe it.

Then he pictured her to himself in her weeds, worn, sad, thin, but still proud and handsome.