Very sorry. Let me know when I can see you.

Charles."

A telegram from Sophia reached me at six o'clock at my father's house. It said:

"Will be at Mario's nine o'clock. Sophia."

The thought of meeting Sophia again made me both nervous and excited. The time crept by with maddening slowness. I was at Mario's waiting twenty minutes too early. Sophia herself was only five minutes late.

It is always a shock to meet again someone whom you have not seen for a long time but who has been very much present in your mind during that period. When at last Sophia came through the swing doors our meeting seemed completely unreal. She was wearing black, and that, in some curious way, startled me! Most other women were wearing black, but I got it into my head that it was definitely mourning - and it surprised me that Sophia should be the kind of person who did wear black - even for a near relative.

We had cocktails - then went and found our table. We talked rather fast and feverishly - asking after old friends of the Cairo days. It was artificial conversation but it tided us over the first awkwardness.

I expressed commiseration for her grandfather's death and Sophia said quietly that it had been "very sudden." Then we started off again reminiscing. I began to feel, uneasily, that something was the matter -something, I mean, other than the first natural awkwardnesses of meeting again.

There was something wrong, definitely wrong, with Sophia herself. Was she, perhaps, going to tell me that she had found some other man whom she cared for more than she did for me? That her feeling for me had been "all a mistake"?

Somehow I didn't think it was that - I didn't know what it was. Meanwhile we continued our artificial talk.

Then, quite suddenly, as the waiter placed coffee on the table and retired bowing, everything swung into focus. Here were Sophia and I sitting together as so often before at a small table in a restaurant. The years of our separation might never have been. - "Sophia," I said.