He had a picture of her somewhere among his papers.

He had not seen it for years, but no picture could do her justice: as rich as was her coloring, as beautiful as were her eyes, her mouth, her _riante_ face, her slim, willowy, girlish figure and fine carriage, it was not these that came to him when he thought of her; it was rather the spirit of which these were but the golden shell: it was the smile, the music, the sunshine, the radiance which came to him and warmed his blood and set his pulses throbbing across all those years.

He would get the picture and look at it.
But memory swept him on.
He had got in the tide of success and the current had borne him away.
First it had been the necessity to succeed; then ambition; then opportunity to do better and better always taking firmer hold of him and bearing him further and further until the pressure of business, change of ambition and, at last, of ideals swept him beyond sight of all he had known or cared for.
He could almost see the process of the metamorphosis.

Year after year he had waited and worked and Catherine Trelane had waited; then had come a time when he did not wish her to wait longer.

His ideals had changed.
Success had come to mean but one thing for him: gold; he no longer strove for honors but for riches.