In the final paragraph of the story, Joyce uses imagery in order to capture Duffy’s emotional state, as seen in the following passage:
He turned back the way he had come, the rhythm of the engine pounding in his ears. He began to doubt the reality of what memory told him. He halted under a tree and allowed the rhythm to die away. He could not feel her near him in the darkness nor her voice touch his ear. He waited for some minutes listening. He could hear nothing: the night was perfectly silent. He listened again: perfectly silent. He felt that he was alone.
The imagery here engages several different senses at once. Readers can hear and feel “the engine [of the train] pounding in [Duffy’s] ears,” as well as the way that it “die[s] away” as he waits under the tree. Likewise, they can experience Duffy’s desire to “feel [Mrs. Sinico] near him” and to feel her voice “touch his ear.” And, while silence is technically the absence of sound, the “perfectly silent” night haunts Duffy and, in this way, haunts readers as well.
All of this imagery combines to communicate how deeply lonely and alienated Duffy is at the end of the story. Mrs. Sinico—his “soul’s companion”—has died, likely as a result of his decision to push her away, and this imagery captures his desperation to be close to her again, in the way that they used to be.
