noon
Yet , as he took his place beside her and looked at her sitting there in the golden light , wrapped round in white , very wan and pale , despite her smile , he felt the strangest , twisted pang of divided desire . She was wan and she was pale , but she was not cool , she was not gray ; he felt in her , as strongly as in far-off days , the warmth and fragrance , and knew that it was Imogen who had so cast her into a shadow . Her image had grown dim on that very first time of seeing Imogen standing as Antigone in the rapt , hushed theater . That dawn had culminated to-day in the over-mastering , all-revealing burst of noon , and from its radiance the past had been hardly visible except as shadow . But now he sat in the moonlight , the past personified in the quiet presence beside him , and the memory of noonday itself became mirage-like and uncertain . He almost felt as if he had been having a wild dream , and that Valerie 's glance was the awakening from it . To think of Imogen 's filial grief and of his promise to her , -- a promise deeply recalled to him by the message of her tear-worn eyes , -- to steady his mind to the task of friendly helpfulness , was to put aside the accompanying memory of eyes , lips , gold hair on a background of flowering laurel , was to re-enter , through sane , kind altruism , his old , normal state of consciousness , and to shut the door on something very sweet and wonderful , to shut the door -- in Imogen 's phraseology -- on his soul , but , in doing that , to be loyal to the older hope .