She wished for the touches of affection, knowing them to be selfish, but her love of life and hard view of its reality made them seem a soft reminder of what life had been.

Alvan had gone.
Her natural blankness of imagination read his absence as an entire relinquishment; it knelled in a vacant chamber.

He had gone; he had committed an irretrievable error, he had given up a fight of his own vain provoking, that was too severe for him: he was not the lover he fancied himself, or not the lord of men she had fancied him.

Her excessive misery would not suffer a picture of him, not one clear recollection of him, to stand before her.

He who should have been at hand, had gone, and she was fearfully beset, almost lifeless; and being abandoned, her blank night of imagination felt that there was nothing left for her save to fall upon those nearest.
She gave her submission to her mother.