orably desirable.

And this strange, unknown woman, whom he had accidentally met in a
railway-carriage belonged to him; he had only to say to her:

"I insist upon it."

He had formerly slept in her arms, existed only in her love, and now he
had found her again certainly, but so changed that he scarcely knew her.
It was another, and yet she at the same time. It was another who had
been born, and had formed and grown since he had left her. It was she,
indeed; she whom he had possessed but who was now altered, with a more
assured smile and greater self-possession. There were two women in one,
mingling a great past of what was new and unknown with many sweet
recollections of the past. There was something singular, disturbing,
exciting about it--a kind of mystery of love in which there floated a
delicious confusion. It was his wife in a new body and in new flesh
which lips had never pressed.

And he thought that in six years everything changes in us, only the
outline can be recognized, and sometimes even that disappears.

The blood, the hair, the skin all change, and is reconstituted, and when
people have not seen each other for a long time, when they meet they
find another totally different being, although it be the same and bear
the same name.

And the heart also can change. Ideas may be modified and renewed, so
that in forty years of life we may, by gradual and constant
transformations, become four or five totally new and different beings.

He dwelt on this thought till it troubled him; it had first taken
possession of him when he surprised her in the Princess's room. He was
not the least angry; it was not the same woman that he was looking
at--that thin, excitable little doll of those days.

What was he to do? How should he address her? and what could he say to
her? Had she recognized him?

The train stopped again. He got up, bowed, and said: "Bertha, do you
want anything I could bring you?..."

She looked at him from head to foot, and answered, without showing the
slightest surprise or confusion, or anger, but with the most perfect
indifference:

"I do not want anything,--thank you."

He got out and walked up and down the platform a little in order to
recover himself, and, as it were, to recover his senses after a fall.
What should he do now? If he got into another carriage it would look as
if he were running away. Should he be polite or importunate? That would
look as if he were asking for forgiveness. S