ductive, more
desirable, adorably desirable.

And this strange, unknown woman, whom he had accidentally met in a
railway carriage, belonged to him; he had only to say to her:

"I insist upon it."

He had formerly slept in her arms, existed only in her love, and now he
had found her again certainly, but so changed that he scarcely knew her.
It was another, and yet it was she herself. It was some one who had been
born and had formed and grown since he had left her. It was she, indeed;
she whom he had loved, but who was now altered, with a more assured smile
and greater self-possession. There were two women in one, mingling a
great part of what was new and unknown with many sweet recollections of
the past. There was something singular, disturbing, exciting about it
--a kind of mystery of love in which there floated a delicious
confusion. It was his wife in a new body and in new flesh which lips had
never pressed.

And he thought that in a few years nearly every thing changes in us; only
the outline can be recognized, and sometimes even that disappears.

The blood, the hair, the skin, all changes and is renewed, and when
people have not seen each other for a long time, when they meet they find
each other totally different beings, although they are the same and bear
the same name.

And the heart also can change. Ideas may be modified and renewed, so that
in forty years of life we may, by gradual and constant transformations,
become four or five totally new and different beings.

He dwelt on this thought till it troubled him; it had first taken
possession of him when he surprised her in the princess' room. He was not
the least angry; it was not the same woman that he was looking at
--that thin, excitable little doll of those days.

What was he to do? How should he address her? and what could he say to
her? Had she recognized him?

The train stopped again. He got up, bowed, and said: "Bertha, do you want
anything I could bring you?"

She looked at him from head to foot, and answered, without showing the
slightest surprise, or confusion, or anger, but with the most perfect
indifference:

"I do not want anything---thank you."

He got out and walked up and down the platform a little in order to
recover himself, and, as it were, to recover his senses after a fall.
What should he do now? If he got into another carriage it would look as
if he were running away. Should he be polite or importunate? That would
look as i