"Are you surprised to see me, Anna? Didn't I promise to come?"
"I thought—that you had forgotten. It is so easy to forget."
"I always keep my promise," he declared.
When had she heard him speak like this before, with this voice, this inflexion—when? Ah, she remembered: when she was ill, when they thought she was going to die. So it was pity for one threatened with death that had brought him to Sorrento; it was pity that banished its habitual irony from his voice.
"The air of Sorrento hasn't cured you," he said, bending a little to look at her.
"It hasn't cured me. It has cured me of nothing. I think I shall never be cured. There is no country in the world that can cure me."
"There is only one doctor who can do you any good—that doctor is yourself."
He opened his silver cigarette-case, took out a cigarette, and lit it.
She watched the vacillating flame of his match, and for a moment did not speak.