Even in his faults he had ever been primitively simple and obvious.

She had been energetic, helping great charities, aiding in philanthropic enterprises, with more than a little shrewdness preventing him from being robbed right and left by adventurers of all descriptions; and yet--and yet it was all so general, so soulless, her activity in good causes.

Was there a single afflicted person, one forlorn soul whom she had directly and personally helped, or sheltered from the storm for a moment, one bereaved being whose eyes she had dried by her own direct personal sympathy?
Was it this which had been more or less vaguely working in his mind a little while before when she had noticed a change in him; or was it that he was disappointed that they were two and no more--always two, and no more?
Was it that which was working in his mind, and making him say hard things about their own two commendable selves?
"If you had lived a thousand years ago you would have had a thousand lovers....

And now you come down through the centuries purified by Time, to be my jasmine-flower"-- She did not break the silence for some time, but at last she said: "And what were you a thousand years ago, my man ?" He drew a hot hand across a troubled brow.

"I?
I was the Satrap whose fury you soothed away, or I was the Antony you lured from fighting Caesar." It was as though he had read those lines written by Ian Stafford long ago.
Again that perfume of hers caught his senses, and his look softened wonderfully.