had once been, but I still retained a sort of affection for him,
and I felt piqued.

'I suppose you looked on me as a kind of ogre in those days?' I
said.

'I suppose I did.'

There was a pause.

'I didn't mean to hurt your feelings,' she said. And that was the
most galling part of it. Mine was an attitude of studied
offensiveness. I did want to hurt her feelings. But hers, it
seemed to me, was no pose. She really had had--and, I suppose,
still retained--a genuine horror of me. The struggle was unequal.

'You were very kind,' she went on, 'sometimes--when you happened
to think of it.'

Considered as the best she could find to say of me, it was not an
eulogy.

'Well,' I said, 'we needn't discuss what I was or did five years
ago. Whatever I was or did, you escaped. Let's think of the
present. What are we going to do about this?'

'You think the situation's embarrassing?'

'I do.'