Over lunch at the Capital Grille on Thursday, the two old friends enjoyed an upbeat, forward-looking conversation.

Kurt L. Schmoke had the tuna steak salad, Sheila Dixon the salmon with vegetables.

Schmoke, a former mayor, imparted an encouraging message to Dixon, the soon-to-be former mayor who announced Wednesday that she will resign as part of a plea with prosecutors to end her corruption case.

"I just wanted to remind her there will be better days down the road," said Schmoke, who served as mayor from 1988 to 1999 and is now dean of the Howard University Law School.

"That was the general tone: You still have a lot of friends out here who care for you, care about your family. And there will be brighter days to come."

Schmoke, asked about the lunch in downtown Baltimore, shared few details about their discussion. He did say they talked mostly about the future.

And he said Dixon spoke "a lot about family - what all this means to her family, what she was going to do with her children in the future."

"She recognized how difficult things were for everybody," he said, "but she knows things will be better in the future."

Schmoke said he saw in Dixon an "inner calm" that one might not expect from someone leaving office grudgingly, after a jury found her guilty of embezzling gift cards intended for the poor.

"If you didn't know what had happened to her life just the last two days," Schmoke said, "you would say, 'Oh, here's a mayor focused on her duties as chief executive of a city.' She was focused on finishing the job."

During the meal, people walked up to say hello and wish Dixon well. The restaurant staff was friendly. "I just thought it would be a nice moment for her to do something that was purely social and not business," he said.

Schmoke noted that he left City Hall "under very different circumstances." He chose not to seek another term. Still, he says he appreciated having conversations that were similar to the one he had Thursday with Dixon.

"I do remember the number of people who wished me well, who made it clear they cared about me personally and not just me as mayor. That's nice to hear from folks like that."