idn't write."

"I returned yesterday."

"Yesterday? You only read yesterday my letter written six months
ago."

"We have so much to talk about, Evelyn, so much to learn from each
other."

"The facts will appear one by one quite naturally. Tell me, weren't
you surprised to hear I had left the convent? And tell me, weren't
you a little disappointed?"

"Disappointed, my dear Evelyn? Should I have wired to you, and come
down here if--. It seemed as if the time would never pass."

"I don't mean that you aren't glad to see me. I can see you are. But
admit that you were disappointed that I hadn't succeeded--"

"I see what you mean. Well, I was disappointed that you were
disappointed; I admit so much." And, walking up the sunny road, he
wondered how it was that she had been able to guess what his thoughts
were on reading her letter. After all, he was not such a brute as he
had fancied himself, and her divination relieved his mind of the fear
that he lacked natural feeling, since she had guessed that a certain
feeling of disappointment was inevitable on hearing that she had not
been able to follow the chosen path. But how clever of her! What
insight!

"I hope you don't misunderstand. I cannot put into words the
pleasure--."

"I quite understand. Even if we turn out of our path sometimes, we
don't like others to vacillate... conversions, divagations, are not
sympathetic."

"Quite true. The man who knows, or thinks he knows, whither he is
going commands our respect, and we are willing to follow--"

"Even though he is the stupider?"

"Which is nearly always." And they ceased talking, each agreeably
surprised by the other's sympathy.

It was on his lips to say, "We are both elderly people now, and must
cling to each other." But no one cares to admit he is elderly, and he
did not speak the words for his sake and for hers, and he refrained
from asking her further questions about the convent; for he had come
to see a woman, loved for so many years, and who would always be
loved by him, and not to gratify his curiosity; he asked why she had
chosen this distant country to live in.

"Distant country? You call this country distant? You, who have only
just come back--"

"Returned yesterday from the Amur."

"From the Amur? I thought I was _the_ amour."

"So you are. I am speaking now of a river in Manchuria."

'Manchuria? But why did you go there?"

"Oh, my dear Evelyn, we have so much to tell each other that it se