That he had confessedly been attracted by her was a matter of common knowledge.
Why had she given him no encouragement?
Perhaps it was because she had never understood him; because she had never been able to feel any real rapport between them, because their minds moved on different planes, and never seemed to meet.

She had no sense of humour, and no insight; he was elusive, difficult to get into touch with; all she knew of him was his exterior, and that, for her, was no guide to the man beneath.
Then he had dropped out of her life, and for five and twenty years she had never heard of him.

Whatever chance she may have had was gone, and gone for ever.

Did she regret it, now that she was able to look back upon the past so calmly?
She thought not.

And yet, as she meditated on those far-off days when she was young and pretty, the intervening years seemed to be annihilated, and she felt herself once more a girl of twenty-two, with a young man hovering around her, always on the verge of a proposal that she herself staved off.
She was not agitated, but she was very curious to see what he would look like, and just a little anxious lest there should be any awkwardness about their meeting.