On the afternoon of the first day after his arrival at the Abbey, some spirit in his feet moved Godfrey to go into the church. As though by instinct, he went to the chancel, and stood there contemplating the brass of the nameless Plantagenet lady. How long it was since he had looked upon her graven face and form draped in the stately habiliments of a bygone age! Then, he remembered with a pang, Isobel was with him, and they had seemed to be very near together. Now there was no Isobel, and they were very far apart, both in the spirit and in the flesh. For he had not heard of her return to England and imagined that she was still in Mexico, whence no tidings of her came to him.
There he stood among the dead, reflecting that we do not need to pass out of the body to know the meaning of death, since, as once Isobel had said herself, some separations are as bad, or worse. The story of the dead is, at any rate, completed; there is nothing more to be learned about them, and of them we imagine, perhaps quite erroneously, that we have no need to be jealous, since we cannot conceive that they may form new interests in another sphere. But with the living it is otherwise. Somewhere their life is continued; somewhere they are getting themselves friends or lovers and carrying on the daily round of being, and we have no share in them or in aught that they may do. And probably they have forgotten us. And, if we still happen to be attached to them, oh! it hurts.
Thus mused Godfrey, trying to picture to himself what Isobel looked like when she had stood by his side on that long-past autumn eve, and only succeeded in remembering exactly what she looked like when she was kissing a rose with a certain knight in armour in a square garden, since for some perverse reason it was this picture that remained so painfully clear to his mind. Then he drifted off into speculations upon the general mystery of things of a sort that were common with him, and in these became oblivious of all else.
He did not even hear or see a tall young woman enter the church, clad in summer white, no, not when she was within five pace and, becoming suddenly aware of his presence, had stopped to study him with the acutest interest. In a flash Isobel knew who he was. Of course he was much changed, for Godfrey, who had matured early, as those of his generation were apt to do, especially if they had led a varied life, was now a handsome and well-built young man with a fine, thoughtful face and a quite respectable moustache.