He knew now why he had not been able to think of marriage in the way Clarice held it out to him, as a happy contingency of his now being as rich as he had intended to be.

It was because he had not thought of her clearly for a long time.
There had been a period in the beginning of his life with Ellen, when the lady of his dreams had been so near the surface of all his thinking that she took on form and likeness from anything that was lovely and young in his neighbourhood, but as things lovely and young drifted from him with the years; and as the business took deeper and deeper hold on his attention, she had become a mere floating figment, a live fluttering spark in the very core of all his imaginings.
She had been beside him, a pleasant, indeterminate presence in the long journey she travelled from the printed page to the accompanying click of Ellen's needles.

Sometimes at the opera she took on a gossamer tint from the singer's face, and longer ago than he could afford operas, he had understood that all the beauty of the world, bursting apple buds, the great curve of the surf that set the beaches trembling, derived somehow its pertinence from her.

Now at the age of forty he had ceased to think very much about the Lovely Lady.
It occurred to him that this might have something to do with his failure to get a new relation to life out of his new wealth.
It had struck Peter rather forlornly during the past few years that there was little use he could put money to, except to make more money.
He could see by turning his head to the room behind him how little there was there of what he had fancied once riches would bring him.

The lines of the room were good, the amount of the annual rent assured that to him, the furniture was good and the rugs expensive.