It is shocking for Helena to realize that, after being divorced for 8 years, she is still irresistibly attracted to her ex-husband after they meet again. But Andreas is still bitter and angry about the past. He still recalled the humiliation he had felt when she had left him. The cruelty of a friend's jest that Andreas had taken the youngest mare from the stable but had not known how to ride it." Yet when Helena saw him she saw only that "he looked vaguely older, a little more harassed than he had been in the past. His body was the same, it exuded strength and a touch of the primitive that the gray mohair silk could not quite disguise."