Sometimes; in a moment of sharp experience; comes that vivid flash of insight that makes a platitude suddenly seem a revelation—its full content is abruptly realized. "Ten years is a long time; yes;" he thought; as he walked up the drive to the great Kensington house where she still lived. Ten years—long enough; at any rate; for her to have married and for her husband to have died. More than that he had not heard; in the outlandish places where life had cast him in the interval. He wondered whether there had been any children. All manner of thoughts and questions; confused a little; passed across his mind. He was well-to-do now; though probably his entire capital did not amount to her income for a single year. He glanced at the huge; forbidding mansion. Yet that pride was false which had made of poverty an insuperable obstacle. He saw it now. He had learned values in his long exile.