“I mean: how shall I explain? I—it’s always so. Each time you happen to me all over again. ”
“Oh, yes: I know! I know!”
“Does it—do I too: to you?” he insisted.
She nodded, looking out of the window.
“Ellen—Ellen—Ellen!”
She made no answer, and he sat in silence, watching her profile grow indistinct against the snow-streaked dusk beyond the window. What had she been doing in all those four long months, he wondered? How little they knew of each other, after all! The precious moments were slipping away, but he had forgotten everything that he had meant to say to her and could only helplessly brood on the mystery of their remoteness and their proximity, which seemed to be symbolised by the fact of their sitting so close to each other, and yet being unable to see each other’s faces.
“What a pretty carriage! Is it May’s?” she asked, suddenly turning her face from the window.
“Yes.”
“It was May who sent you to fetch me, then? How kind of her!”
He made no answer for a moment; then he said explosively: “Your husband’s secretary came to see me the day after we met in Boston.”
In his brief letter to her he had made no allusion to M. Rivière’s visit, and his intention had been to bury the incident in his bosom. But her reminder that they were in his wife’s carriage provoked him to an impulse of retaliation. He would see if she liked his reference to Rivière