"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?"