She declared to him that his own was the larger, the dearer possession--the portion one would have chosen if one had been able to choose; she assured him she could perfectly imagine some of the echoes with which his silences were peopled.

He knew she couldn't: one's relation to what one had loved and hated had been a relation too distinct from the relations of others.

But this didn't affect the fact that they were growing old together in their piety.

She was a feature of that piety, but even at the ripe stage of acquaintance in which they occasionally arranged to meet at a concert or to go together to an exhibition she was not a feature of anything else.
The most that happened was that his worship became paramount.

Friend by friend dropped away till at last there were more emblems on his altar than houses left him to enter.