The moon was nearly full and shone in her windows, a stream of its rays falling on her bed and bringing to her those immortal waves of fancy which begin where the scent of flowers stop, and end where immortal and melancholy music begins.

Unbidden tears came to her eyes, though she couldn't have told you why, and again a sense of the fleeting of time disturbed her.
"Aunt Mary ..." In a few years she would be old, and her hair would be white like Aunt Patty's....

And in a few years more....
But even as Wally Cabot kept her from thinking too much of Archey Forbes, so now Archey unconsciously revenged himself and kept her thoughts from centring too closely around Wally Cabot.
Archey called the next afternoon and Mary sat on the veranda steps with him, while Helen made hay with Wally on a tete-a-tete above.
The few women who were left in the factory were having things made unpleasant for them: that was what Archey had come to tell her.

Their canteen had been stopped; the day nursery discontinued; the nurses discharged.
"Of course they are not needed there any longer, so far as that is concerned," concluded Archey, "but they certainly helped us out of a hole when we did need them, and it doesn't seem right now to treat them rough." At hearing this, a guilty feeling passed over Mary and left her cheeks warm.

"They'll think I've deserted them," she thought.
"Well, haven't you ?" something inside her asked.
Some of her old dreams returned to her mind, as though to mock her.