"He is just where I left him eighteen years ago, and yet it is different.

In some inexplicable way it is different from what I expected." And she told herself that the fault was her own--that she had changed, hardened, and become hopelessly matter-of-fact--that she had lost her youth and her sentiment.
Suddenly, as if the action had been forced upon him by the steady pressure of some deep conviction, some inner necessity, Arthur turned his face toward her, and asked gently: "Gabriella, do you ever think of the past ?" Facing the rosy sunset, his features looked wan and colourless, and she noticed again that he seemed to have dried through and through, like some rare fruit that has lain wrapped in tissue paper too long.
She looked at him with wistful and sombre eyes.

Now that the desired moment had come, she felt only that she would have given her whole future to escape before it overtook her, to avoid the inevitable, crowning hour of her destiny.
"I think of it very often," she answered truthfully, while she buried her face in the intoxicating bloom of the honeysuckle.
"Do you remember my telling you once that I'd never give you up--that I'd never stop caring ?" "Yes, I remember--but, oh, Arthur, you mustn't--" She sat up with a start, gazing straight ahead into the rose and gold of the afterglow.
From the deserted road, winding flat and dun-coloured in the soft light, she heard another voice--the strong and buoyant voice of O'Hara--saying: "I'm not the sort to change--" and then over again, "I'm not the sort to change--" "I suppose it's too late," Arthur went on, with his patient tenderness.
"Things usually come too late for me or else I miss them altogether.
That's been the way always--and now--" With his left hand he made a large, slow, commemorative gesture.
"You're the best--the kindest--" An urgent desire moved her to stop him before he put into words the feeling she could see in his face.

Though she knew that it was but the ghost of a feeling, the habit of a desire, which had become interwoven with his orderly and unchangeable custom of life, she realized nevertheless that its imaginary vividness might cause him great suffering.

A vision of what might have been eighteen years ago--of their possible marriage--rose before her while she struggled for words.