The Baron looked at her and was stupefied. He was not at all sure he could believe his eyes. Honestly, he could have sworn it was … it was his wife! But extraordinarily changed! Changed so much … but so much for the better! She was so much fuller … like himself no doubt but to her far, far greater advantage. She looked at him calmly without any apparent recognition and began methodically to extricate herself from her outer coverings. She showed the quiet confidence of a self-assured woman somewhat rudely awakened but conscious of being in the full, fresh prime of her life.

The Baron was going mad.

Was it his wife? Or was it some other woman who happened to look exactly like her? It was six years since he had seen her, after all. He could be wrong. She yawned. Her gestures were familiar to him. But again, as she turned her gaze towards him, it was unperturbed and indifferent, a blank look which she now fixed upon the countryside. He was totally bewildered and in an agony of doubt. He waited again, keeping a steady watch on her out of the corner of his eye. Of course it was his wife, damn it all! How could he possibly imagine otherwise? How many other women had that nose? A thousand memories came crowding in, memories of her caresses, the finer detail of her body, a beauty spot on her thigh, a matching one on her back. How often he had kissed them! He felt himself fall into the old intoxication, remembering once again the smell of her skin, her smile as she threw her arms around his neck, the gentle tone of her voice, and all her graceful, winning ways. But how altered she was, how very much more beautiful. It was she and yet no longer she. He found her more mature, more womanly, more attractive, more desirable, more adorably desirable. To think that this stranger, this unknown woman whom he had met by chance in a railway carriage, was legally his. He had only to say the word.

He used once to sleep in her arms and live surrounded by her love. Now he found her so changed that he hardly recognized her. She was simultaneously herself and someone else. She had been reborn, reshaped, and had grown into a different woman during the time since he had left her. Yet she was also the woman he had possessed and whose behaviour he now saw altered. Her features were more developed, her smile was less simpering and her gestures more confident. She was two women in one, a mixture of the largely unknown and the fondly remembered. There was something very special about the combination, something disturbing and exciting. It was the mystery of love clouded in delightful vagueness. It was his wife in a new body, made of new flesh which his lips had yet to trace.