An instant later Arthur's name was announced, and Gabriella, with her hands in his clasp, stood looking into his face.

It had been eighteen years since they parted, and in those eighteen years she had carried his image like some sacred talisman in her breast.
"How little you've changed, Gabriella," he said after a moment of silence in which she told herself that he was far better looking, far more distinguished than she had remembered him.

"You are larger than you used to be, but your face is as girlish as ever." "And I have two children nearly grown," she replied with a trembling little laugh; "a daughter who is already thinking of the White Sulphur." They sat down in the pink chairs on the gray carpet, and leaned forward, looking into each other's faces as tenderly as they had done when they were lovers.
"It's hard to believe it," he answered a little stiffly, in his dry and gentle voice, which held a curious note of finality, of failure.

For the first time, while he spoke, she let her eyes rest frankly upon him, and there came to her, as she did so, a vivid realization of the emptiness and aimlessness of his life.

He looked handsomer than ever; he looked stately and formal and impressive; but he looked old--though he was only forty-five--he looked old and ineffectual and acquiescent.