never really made it up. Somehow even the circumstance that--after the
first soreness--I was glad to have lost her had never put us quite right
with each other; nor, for herself, had it made her less ashamed of her
heartless behaviour that poor Pallant proved finally no great catch. I
had forgiven her; I hadn't felt it anything but an escape not to have
married a girl who had in her to take back her given word and break
a fellow's heart for mere flesh-pots--or the shallow promise, as it
pitifully turned out, of flesh-pots. Moreover we had met since then--on
the occasion of my former visit to Europe; had looked each other in the
eyes, had pretended to be easy friends and had talked of the wickedness
of the world as composedly as if we were the only just, the only pure.
I knew by that time what she had given out--that I had driven her off by
my insane jealousy before she ever thought of Henry Pallant, before
she had ever seen him. This hadn't been before and couldn't be to-day
a ground of real reunion, especially if you add to it that she knew
perfectly what I thought of her. It seldom ministers to friendship, I
believe, that your friend shall know your real opinion, for he knows it
mainly when it's unfavourable, and this is especially the case if--let
the solecism pass!--he be a woman. I hadn't followed Mrs. Pallant's
fortunes; the years went by for me in my own country, whereas she led
her life, which I vaguely believed to be difficult after her husband's
death--virtually that of a bankrupt--in foreign lands. I heard of
her from time to time; always as "established" somewhere, but on each
occasion in a different place. She drifted from country to country, and
if she had been of a hard composition at the beginning it could never
occur to me that her struggle with society, as it might be called, would
have softened the paste. Whenever I heard a woman spoken of as "horribly
worldly" I thought immediately of the object of my early passion. I
imagined she had debts, and when I now at last made up my mind to recall
myself to her it was present to me that she might ask me to lend her
money. More than anything else, however, at this time of day, I was
sorry for her, so that such an idea didn't operate as a deterrent.

She pretended afterwards that she hadn't noticed me--expressing as
we stood face to face great surprise and wishing to know where I had
dropped from; but I think the corner of her eye had taken me in and she
had be