People had told her that love lasted forever, yet she knew that her emotion for George was so utterly dead that there was no warmth left in the ashes.

It had all been so vivid once, and now it was as dull and colourless as the dust drifting after the blue and white hyacinths.
From the trail of dust and the fragrance of the hyacinths, Arthur's face floated up to her, grave, gentle, and thin-featured, with its look of detached culture, of nameless distinction.

She recalled the colour of his eyes, as clear and cool as running water, his sensitive lips under the thin, brown moustache, and his slender, aristocratic hands, with their touch as soft and as tender as a woman's.

"He had intellect--he had culture--I suppose these are the things that really matter," she thought, for George, she knew, possessed neither of these qualities.
And, as she remembered Arthur, she was stirred, not by tenderness, but by a passionate gratitude.

He had loved her, and by loving her, he had saved her pride from defeat.