“Some one who is not girlish now”
It was only yesterday that I saw her. It happened that the string of carriages was stopped at that moment, and I went to the door of her comfortable-looking barouche.
“Do you ever feel that shoulder,” I asked, raising my hat, “at the changes of the weather, or when it is damp?”
She turned and looked at me in surprise. Her face had altered little. It was the face of a happy woman, despite a few lines, which were not the marks left by a life of gaiety and dissipation. They were not quite the lines that Time had drawn on the faces of the women in the carriages around her. In some ways she looked younger than most of them, and her eyes had an expression which was lacking in the gas-wearied orbs of her fashionable sisters. It was the shadowy reflection of things seen.
She looked into my face—noting the wear and tear that life had left there. Then suddenly she smiled and held out her hand.
“You!” she said. “You—how strange!”
She blushed suddenly and laughed with a pretty air of embarrassment which was startlingly youthful.
“No,” she went on, in answer to my question; “I never feel that shoulder now—thanks to you.”
There were a number of questions I wanted to ask her. But I had fallen into a habit, years ago, of restraining that inexpedient desire; and she did not seem to expect interrogation. Besides, I could see many answers in her face.
“You limped just now,” she said, leaning towards me with a little grave air of sympathy which was quite familiar to me—like an old friend forgotten until seen again. “You limped as you crossed the road.”