'Yes,' she answered simply. 'In a far part of London.'
'And we meet here, where I seemed to find myself by the merest chance. I saw a stranger in the distance, and thought of yourself; I knew you long before you looked up from your reading.'
Emily tried to smile.
'How little you are changed!' Wilfrid continued, his voice keeping still its awed quietness, with under-notes of feeling. 'Rather, you are not changed at all.'
It was not true, but in the few minutes that he had gazed at her, past and present had so blended that he could not see what another would have noticed. Emily was appreciably older, and ill-health had set marks upon her face. A stranger looking at her now would have found it hard to imagine her with the light of joy in her eyes; her features had set themselves in sorrow. Her cheeks were very thin; her eyes were dark and sunken. Wilfrid saw only the soul in her gaze at him, and that was as it had ever been.
She was unable to speak; Wilfrid found words.
'Do you often walk here? Is your home near?'
'Not very near. I came by the river,' she answered.
'I am very glad that I have met you.' The words sounded insufficient, but Wilfrid was by this time at battle with himself, and succeeded in saying less than he felt. 'You will let me walk on a little way with you? We can't shake hands at once and say good-bye, can we, after such a long time?'
He spoke in the tone one uses to jest over bygone sadness. Emily made no verbal answer, but walked along by his side.