“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 seems hopeless.  Can you tell me why you—­no, don’t answer, don’t try to tell why you went to the convent; but tell me why you came to live in this neighbourhood?”

“Well, the land is very cheap here, and I wanted a large piece of ground.”

“Oh, so you’ve settled here?”

“Yes; I’ve built a cottage...  But I haven’t been able to lay the garden out yet.”

“Built a cottage?”

“What is there surprising in that?”

“Only this, that I returned home resolved to do some building at Riversdale—­a gate lodge,” and he talked to her of the gate lodge he had in mind, until he became aware of the incongruity.  “But I didn’t come here to talk to you of gate lodges.  Tell me, Evelyn, how do you spend your time?”