The things we do!

Clive Newcome was not looking at Barnes. His eyes were fixed upon the
lady seated not far from the lecturer--upon Ethel, with her arm round her
little niece's shoulder, and her thick black ringlets drooping down over
a face paler than Clive's own.
Of course she knew that Clive was present. She was aware of him as she
entered the hall; saw him at the very first moment; saw nothing but him,
I dare say, though her eyes were shut and her head was turned now towards
her mother, and now bent down on the little niece's golden curls. And the
past and its dear histories, and youth and its hopes and passions, and
tones and looks for ever echoing in the heart, and present in the memory
--these, no doubt, poor Clive saw and heard as he looked across the great
gulf of time, and parting, and grief, and beheld the woman he had loved
for many years. There she sits; the same, but changed: as gone from him
as if she were dead; departed indeed into another sphere, and entered
into a kind of death.


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