The story of the dead is, at any rate, completed; there is nothing more to be learned about them, and of them we imagine, perhaps quite erroneously, that we have no need to be jealous, since we cannot conceive that they may form new interests in another sphere.

But with the living it is otherwise.
Somewhere their life is continued; somewhere they are getting themselves friends or lovers and carrying on the daily round of being, and we have no share in them or in aught that they may do.

And probably they have forgotten us.

And, if we still happen to be attached to them, oh! it hurts.
Thus mused Godfrey, trying to picture to himself what Isobel looked like when she had stood by his side on that long-past autumn eve, and only succeeded in remembering exactly what she looked like when she was kissing a rose with a certain knight in armour in a square garden, since for some perverse reason it was this picture that remained so painfully clear to his mind.

Then he drifted off into speculations upon the general mystery of things of a sort that were common with him, and in these became oblivious of all else.
He did not even hear or see a tall young woman enter the church, clad in summer white, no, not when she was within five pace and, becoming suddenly aware of his presence, had stopped to study him with the acutest interest.