Some trite phrase about the "ravages of time" crossed John's mind and gave him a disagreeable sensation, for which it was hard to account.

He felt as though his dream were suddenly dead and a strange reality had taken life in its place.

Could this be she to whom he had written verses by the score, at whose smile he had swelled with pride, at whose careless laugh he had trembled with shame?
She was terribly changed, she looked positively old--what John called old.

As he sat by her side talking and wondering whether he would fall back into those same grooves of conversation he had associated with her formerly, he felt something akin to pity for her, which he had certainly never expected to feel.

She was not the same as before--even the tone of her voice was different; she was gentle, pathetic, endowed even now with many charms, but she was not the woman he had dreamed of and tried to speak to of the love he fancied was in his heart.