For fear of a misstep, he had not dared to go forward; from dread of pain, he had refused the opportunity of happiness.

She knew now why he had never come to her, why he had let her slip from his grasp.

All that was a part of his failure, of his distrust of life, of his profound negation of spirit.
"Yes, it is hard," she assented; and there came over her like a sudden sense of discomfort, of physical hardship, the knowledge that, in the very beginning, she was trying to make conversation.

Meeting his sympathetic smile--the smile that still delighted the impressionable hearts of old ladies--she told herself obstinately, with desperate determination, that she was not disappointed, that he was just as she had remembered him, dear and lovable and kind and conventional.

When she recalled what he had been at twenty-seven, it appeared inevitable to her that at forty-five he should have settled a little more firmly into the mould of the past, that his opinions should have crystallized and imprisoned his mind immovably in the centre of them.
She told him what she could about Archibald and Fanny--about her choice of schools, her maternal pride in Archibald's intellect and Fanny's appearance, her hopeful plans for the future--and he listened attentively, with his manner of slightly pompous consideration, while he passed one of his long narrow hands over his forehead.