A faint smile curved her lips. She held out her hand. It was cold to his rather feverish touch. “She’s made of ice,” he thought⁠—“she was always made of ice!” But even as that thought darted through him, his senses were assailed by the perfume of her dress and body, as though the warmth within her, which had never been for him, were struggling to show its presence. And he turned on his heel. He walked out and away, as if someone with a whip were after him, not even looking for a cab, glad of the empty Embankment and the cold river, and the thick-strewn shadows of the plane-tree leaves⁠—confused, flurried, sore at heart, and vaguely disturbed, as though he had made some deep mistake whose consequences he could not foresee. And the fantastic thought suddenly assailed him: if instead of, “I think you had better go,” she had said, “I think you had better stay!” What should he have felt, what would he have done? That cursed attraction of her was there for him even now, after all these years of estrangement and bitter thoughts. It was there, ready to mount to his head at a sign, a touch. “I was a fool to go!” he muttered. “I’ve advanced nothing. Who could imagine? I never thought!” Memory, flown back to the first years of his marriage, played him torturing tricks.