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As he walks through the colorful garden, Simon is momentarily lost in recollections of his past. Highly imaginative, he recalls a painful moment with Lily fifteen years earlier. He remembers that distant moment in extraordinary detail, including his thoughts, crucial descriptions of the scene, and interpretations of events around him as they happened to unfold. He remembers the larger context, where the two had been sitting by a lake and that he “begged her to marry [him] all through the hot afternoon,” and he drifts into imaginative specifics of what happened. He is calm and introspective now, reflecting on how the “square silver buckle” at the toe of Lily’s shoe bounced nervously during his proposal, as well as how a dragonfly had drifted around them, a metaphor for his love for her. He likens this relationship to a dragonfly, unable to find a place to settle. Now, years later, while the memory remains vivid and persistent, he feels content that Lily rejected him, as it led to his later relationship with Eleanor and the fact that they have the two children.
