often that there were moments when he wished he might be sure, so
straight did their prospect stretch away of growing old together in
their rites. She was younger than he, but she looked as if her
Dead were at least as numerous as his candles. She had no colour,
no sound, no fault, and another of the things about which he had
made up his mind was that she had no fortune. Always black-robed,
she must have had a succession of sorrows. People weren't poor,
after all, whom so many losses could overtake; they were positively
rich when they had had so much to give up. But the air of this
devoted and indifferent woman, who always made, in any attitude, a
beautiful accidental line, conveyed somehow to Stransom that she
had known more kinds of trouble than one.

He had a great love of music and little time for the joy of it; but
occasionally, when workaday noises were muffled by Saturday
afternoons, it used to come back to him that there were glories.
There were moreover friends who reminded him of this and side by
side with whom he found himself sitting out concerts. On one of
these winter afternoons, in St. James's Hall, he became aware after
he had seated himself that the lady he had so often seen at church
was in the place next him and was evidently alone, as he also this
time happened to be. She was at first too absorbed in the
consideration of the programme to heed him, but when she at last
glanced at him he took advantage of the movement to speak to her,
greeting her with the remark that he felt as if he already knew
her. She smiled as she said "Oh yes, I recognise you"; yet in
spite of this admission of long acquaintance it was the first he
had seen of her smile. The effect of it was suddenly to contribute
more to that acquaintance than all the previous meetings had done.
He hadn't "taken in," he said to himself, that she was so pretty.