ut a flower.

Poor, lovely little Kitty: the sight of the rain-dimmed meadow-sweet, by
the brookside in a passing field, brought her before him in this aspect
of innocent disillusioner. For nothing essential, nothing that counted
in him, was answered or called forth by Kitty except a slightly ironic
tenderness. He didn't judge life from his own failure to find splendid
mutual enterprise and sacred mutual comprehension where his lover's
blindness had thought to find it. Nor did he judge Kitty. His own
blindness was the fault, if fault there were, and even that blindness he
could now see tolerantly. The dart and pang had gone from his memory of
young love; his smile for it was indulgent; he was even glad that the
memory was there, glad that he had known the illusion, even if it were
at the price of failure in that happy realm of life. Little of the
sadness could have been Kitty's; she had not known the bitterness of his
slow awakening; she was easily contented with the tame terms of
unillumined life. A charming home; a fond husband; a pretty, diligent
part to play in the political and social life of the countryside; the
nicest taste to show in dress and friends;--Kitty, he imagined, thought
of her life as completely successful. And why not? He himself saw love
as an episode and contentedly accepted the fact that for the flower-like
woman and the man who works there can be, eventually, no deeper bond.

He knew two or three other women who interested him more than Kitty ever
could; to them he went when he wanted to talk about anything he cared
for. Kitty was sweet to see; she made him very comfortable; she rarely
irritated him. With friends and Kitty what did he want of women more?
Outside these domestic and drawing-room circles was the world of men and
ideas in which he lived, in which his real life had its roots.

Yet, as the train neared the little country station, as familiar lanes
and meadows glided slowly past the windows, he became aware that his
thoughts had more and more slid from this outside life, this world of
work and reality, and that from thinking of the little part that Kitty
played in it he had come to thinking of Kitty and to the thought that he
was to see her for the last time.--Yes; that crashed in at last. At last
something seemed to come to him which, in the pain of it, was completely
adequate to the situation. It was the Kitty of six years ago that he saw
most clearly, the girl he had fallen in love