Many thoughts passed through his mind, imaginings of things he had thought left behind forever--sensations and longings which to the normal eye of middle age are but dried forms hung in the museum of memory.

They started up at the whip of the still-living youth, the lost wildness at the heart of every man.

Like the reviving flame of half-spent fires, longing for discovery leaped and flickered in Hilary--to find out once again what things were like before he went down the hill of age.
No trivial ghost was beckoning him; it was the ghost, with unseen face and rosy finger, which comes to men when youth has gone.
Miranda, hearing him so silent, rose.

At this hour it was her master's habit to scratch paper.

She, who seldom scratched anything, because it was not delicate, felt dimly that this was what he should be doing.