"How you have altered!... Yes, I don't know that there's anything else."
She did not reply, and he regarded her irresolutely.
"Can you?"
"No," she said. "Why should I forgive you—because time has gone by? Is that any merit of yours? You treated me brutally, infamously. The most that a woman can do for a man I did for you; the worst that a man can do to a woman you did to me. You meet me accidentally and expect me to forgive? You must be a great deal less worldly-wise than you were three years ago."
She turned to him for the first time since he had joined her, and his eyes fell.
"I didn't expect," he said; "I only asked. So you're a nurse again, eh?"
"Yes."
He gave an impatient sigh, the sigh of a man; who realises the discordancy of life and imperfectly resigns himself to it.
"We're both what we used to be, and we're both older. Well, I'm the worse off of the two, if that's any consolation to you. A woman's always getting opportunities for new beginnings."
She checked the retort that sprang to her lips, eager to glean some knowledge of his affairs, though she could not bring herself to put a question; and after a moment she rejoined indifferently: