The city, beneath that azure sky, borrowed the transparent brightness of an object that is imprisoned in crystal.

White magic had transformed it for an hour, and the street, the houses, the shining elm tree, and the distant frowning brows of the skyscrapers, all seemed as unreal as the vivid yet impalpable images in a dream.

And into this world of crystal there drifted, like the essence of spring, the dreamy fragrance from the window box filled with white hyacinths.
While she stood there Gabriella thought pensively of many things.

She thought of the day's work before her, of the gown she was designing for Mrs.Pletheridge, of Fanny's latest lover, the brother of a schoolmate, of the clothes she should send the child to the White Sulphur Springs, of her mother, and of Jane's eldest daughter, Margaret; and then very slowly, with the scent of the hyacinths drowning all merely prosaic memories, she began to think hopelessly and tenderly of Arthur Peyton.
She thought of him as he had looked on the day when she had told him of her engagement of the sympathetic expression in his eyes, and of his beautiful manner, which she had felt at the time she could never forget.
Well, after eighteen years she had not forgotten it.

Compared with Arthur, all other men seemed to her as unreal as shadows.