"Are they things you like to think of?"
"Some of them—not all."
"It must be a curious experience," said Bertha, "to find yourself here again after so many years—with all your life changed for you."
Mrs. Sylvestre did not reply.
"You have not been here," Bertha continued, "since you went away on your wedding journey. You were nineteen or twenty then,—only a girl."
"I was young," said Mrs. Sylvestre, "but I was rather mature for my years. I did not feel as if I was exactly a girl."
Then she added, in a lower voice:
"I had experienced something which had ripened me."
"You mean," said Bertha, "that you knew what love was."
She had not intended to say the words, and their abrupt directness grated upon her as she spoke; but she could not have avoided uttering them.