As Gabriel and Gretta leave the party and walk through the snow to catch a cab home, Gabriel reflects on their “secret life” together, reminiscing about romantic moments they have shared in the past:
Moments of their secret life together burst like stars upon his memory. A heliotrope envelope was lying beside his breakfast-cup and he was caressing it with his hand. Birds were twittering in the ivy and the sunny web of the curtain was shimmering along the floor: he could not eat for happiness. They were standing on the crowded platform and he was placing a ticket inside the warm palm of her glove.
Here, Gabriel seems to be accessing some of his most cherished moments with Gretta, experienced before they settled into the rhythms of married life. Joyce’s cinematic use of discrete images, contained in separate sentences, helps to bring the reader into Gabriel’s own thought process as he reviews these memories in short, quick bursts—akin to the stream of consciousness technique used elsewhere in the story, which helps the reader to access Gabriel’s circuitous thoughts. This style also foreshadows Gabriel’s bleak future by underscoring the transience of his happiest moments in life. Since they are memories, he can only revisit them briefly before returning to his more mundane present: "the years of their dull existence together," with their duties as parents and workers (for Gabriel, teaching and writing, and for Gretta, household labor). Destined for a frustrating and possibly passionless life, Gabriel feels joy only through nostalgia, not by way of the present—a severe limitation for his character.
