He had this year, on the eve of his anniversary, as happened, an emotion not unconnected with that range of feeling.  Walking home at the close of a busy day he was arrested in the London street by the particular effect of a shop-front that lighted the dull brown air with its mercenary grin and before which several persons were gathered.  It was the window of a jeweller whose diamonds and sapphires¹ seemed to laugh, in flashes like high notes of sound, with the mere² joy of knowing how much more they were “worth” than most of the dingy³ pedestrians⁴ staring at them from the other side of the pane⁵.  Stransom lingered long enough to suspend, in a vision, a string of pearls about the white neck of Mary Antrim, and then was kept an instant longer by the sound of a voice he knew.  Next him was a mumbling⁶ old woman, and beyond the old woman a gentleman with a lady on his arm.  It was from him, from Paul Creston, the voice had proceeded: he was talking with the lady of some precious object in the window.  Stransom had no sooner recognised him than the old woman turned away; but just with this growth of opportunity came a felt strangeness that stayed him in the very act of laying his hand on his friend’s arm.  It lasted but the instant, only that space sufficed for the flash of a wild question.  Was not Mrs. Creston dead?—the ambiguity⁷ met him there in the short drop of her husband’s voice, the drop conjugal⁸, if it ever was, and in the way the two figures leaned to each other.  Creston, making a step to look at something else, came nearer, glanced at him, started and exclaimed—behaviour the effect of which was at first only to leave Stransom staring, staring back across the months at the different face, the wholly other face, the poor man had shown him last, the blurred⁹ ravaged¹⁰ mask bent¹¹ over the open grave by which they had stood together.  That son of affliction wasn’t in mourning now; he detached his arm from his companion’s to grasp the hand of the older friend.  He coloured as well as smiled in the strong light of the shop when Stransom raised a tentative hat to the lady.  Stransom had just time to see she was pretty before he found himself gaping¹² at a fact more portentous¹³.  “My dear fellow, let me make you acquainted with my wife.”  
Creston had blushed and stammered¹⁴ over it, but in half a minute, at the rate we live in polite society, it had practically become, for our friend, the mere memory of a shock.  They stood there and laughed and talked; Stransom had instantly whisked the shock out of the way, to keep it for private consumption.  He felt himself grimace¹⁵, he heard himself exaggerate the proper, but was conscious of turning not a little faint.  That new woman, that hired performer, Mrs. Creston?  Mrs. Creston had been more living for him than any woman but one.  This lady had a face that shone as publicly as the jeweller’s window, and in the happy candour with which she wore her monstrous¹⁶ character was an effect of gross immodesty.  The character of Paul Creston’s wife thus attributed to her was monstrous for reasons Stransom could judge his friend to know perfectly¹⁷ that he knew.  The happy pair had just arrived from America, and Stransom hadn’t needed to be told this to guess the nationality of the lady.  Somehow it deepened the foolish air that her husband’s confused cordiality was unable to conceal¹⁸.  Stransom recalled that he had heard of poor Creston’s having, while his bereavement¹⁹ was still fresh, crossed the sea for what people in such predicaments call a little change.  He had found the little change indeed, he had brought the little change back; it was the little change that stood there and that, do what he would, he couldn’t, while he showed those high front teeth of his, look other than a conscious ass²⁰ about.  They were going into the shop, Mrs. Creston said, and she begged Mr. Stransom to come with them and help to decide.  He thanked her, opening his watch and pleading an engagement for which he was already late, and they parted while she shrieked²¹ into the fog, “Mind now you come to see me right away!”  Creston had had the delicacy²² not to suggest that, and Stransom hoped it hurt him somewhere to hear her scream it to all the echoes.
 
He felt quite determined²³, as he walked awa............