It was two years since he had seen this woman, and when they had parted there had been more between them of the remembrances of old friendship than of present affection.

During the last few weeks of their intimacy she had made a point of telling him that she intended to separate herself from her husband; but she had done so as though it were a duty, and an arranged part of her own defence of her own conduct.

And in the latter incidents of her London life,--that life with which he had been conversant,--she had generally been opposed to him, or, at any rate, had chosen to be divided from him.

She had said severe things to him,--telling him that he was cold, heartless, and uninterested, never trying even to please him with that sort of praise which had once been so common with her in her intercourse with him, and which all men love to hear from the mouths of women.

She had then been cold to him, though she would make wretched allusions to the time when he, at any rate, had not been cold to her.