In six years, he reflected, everything about us changes. Only the outline remains the same and sometimes even that goes. All is reconstituted and renewed differently – blood, hair, skin, everything. When a long time goes by before you see someone again, you find them quite different, though they are obviously the same person and have the same identity. So it is with the heart, which can also change, and with ideas, which are constantly altered or replaced. In forty years of living, through ceaseless, slow transformations, we can become four or five completely new and different human beings. He searched his soul. Thinking back suddenly to the night when he had surprised her in the Princess’s bedchamber, he felt no trace of anger. The woman before him was no longer the skinny little flibbertigibbet of yesteryear.

What should he do? How should he speak to her? What should he say? Had she recognized him? The train was stopping again. He rose, bowed and spoke: ‘Berthe, is there anything you need? Could I bring you … ?’

She looked him up and down and replied with neither embarrassment nor anger but calm indifference: ‘No. Nothing, thank you.’

He jumped down and took a few steps on the platform as if to get his balance back after a fall. What was he to do now? Get into another carriage? That would look too much like running away. Pay court and dance attendance? She might think he was begging for forgiveness. Be masterful? Crude thought. Besides, if he was honest, he had already forfeited that right. He climbed in and took his seat again. She in turn had taken advantage of his absence to quickly perform her own toilet. She was now comfortably relaxed in her seat looking both radiant and unapproachable.

He turned to her and said: ‘My dear Berthe, just because fate has so strangely thrown us together again after six years’ separation, peaceful separation at that, must we carry on behaving like sworn enemies? Here we are, thrown together, as I say. It’s up to us, but I’ll tell you one thing – I’m certainly not getting out. Couldn’t we just have a little conversation together … like … like … I don’t know … like friends? Till we get to wherever we’re going?’

‘If you wish,’ she replied calmly.

He fell silent, at a loss for words. Then, daringly, he moved closer, sat himself down on the middle seat next to her and began with practised charm: ‘I see I’m going to have to woo you all over again. Can’t say I mind. In fact I shall relish it. You really are devastatingly attractive, you know. You can’t imagine what an improvement there is in you! I tell you I know no other woman who could have given me the sort of thrill I felt just now, seeing you emerge from those furs. Really, I would never have believed such a change …’