Chap­ter XX cap­tures a shift in pace and tone as Ivor departs Crome with the air of some­one accus­tomed to drift­ing from one pol­ished encounter to the next. His farewell, though warm, car­ries no weight of per­ma­nence; his eyes are already fixed on the next stop, the next face wait­ing to greet him with enthu­si­asm. Crome becomes just one more book­mark in a sum­mer diary filled with fleet­ing but intense social appoint­ments. Though he departs, his pres­ence lingers through a part­ing verse scrib­bled into the guestbook—his sig­na­ture ges­ture, offer­ing charm with­out com­mit­ment. The poem is grace­ful, rich in emo­tion­al illu­sion, and lay­ered with the kind of depth that cap­ti­vates even if it nev­er roots. That moment of lit­er­ary good­bye reflects his abil­i­ty to offer moments of beau­ty that fade as quick­ly as they arrive, a reminder of how some peo­ple are remem­bered more for the feel­ing they leave than the facts they pro­vide.

Denis and Mr. Sco­gan remain behind, their con­ver­sa­tion turn­ing from the spec­ta­cle of Ivor’s exit to a qui­eter reflec­tion on words and their emo­tion­al res­o­nance. Denis shares his dis­ap­point­ment at learn­ing the real mean­ing of “carmi­na­tive,” a word he once loved for its mys­te­ri­ous, almost mag­i­cal qual­i­ty. Once revealed to mean some­thing as dull as a diges­tive aid, the charm van­ished, replaced by the clin­i­cal clar­i­ty of def­i­n­i­tion. This moment is more than a lin­guis­tic griev­ance; it’s a med­i­ta­tion on how the world los­es mag­ic as under­stand­ing grows. Words, like peo­ple or places, can be more impact­ful in mys­tery than in clar­i­ty. Denis mourns not just a word, but the loss of inno­cence in how lan­guage once stirred feel­ings beyond log­ic or real­i­ty. The beau­ty of sound, rhythm, and asso­ci­a­tion had offered more than the mean­ing itself ever could.

Mr. Sco­gan lis­tens with dry amuse­ment, respond­ing with his usu­al philo­soph­i­cal detach­ment. He argues that most things in life—words included—become less enchant­i­ng once they are ana­lyzed too thor­ough­ly. Mag­ic, he sug­gests, relies on a dis­tance from cer­tain­ty. In his view, the intel­lec­tu­al impulse to decode every­thing strips the world of its emo­tion­al col­or. It is not that mean­ing is unim­por­tant, but that mean­ing often fails to sat­is­fy the emo­tion­al hunger that beau­ty alone can feed. The poet­ic, the abstract, the irrational—these are the realms where art and emo­tion flour­ish. Mr. Sco­gan’s mus­ings con­trast Denis’s heart­felt loss with a cyn­i­cal wis­dom that sees the whole affair as a nec­es­sary step in matu­ri­ty.

Their dis­cus­sion widens into a gen­tle but poignant cri­tique of modernity’s obses­sion with expla­na­tion. The more we define, the less we feel. This applies to art, lan­guage, even human rela­tion­ships. Denis, still cling­ing to the emo­tion­al pow­er of words, won­ders if a bal­ance can be struck—can we under­stand with­out killing the won­der? The con­ver­sa­tion leaves that ques­tion open, hov­er­ing between them as a kind of unre­solved chord. Much like Ivor’s poem, it res­onates with­out resolv­ing, lin­ger­ing longer than any con­clu­sion could. The irony is sub­tle: they are dis­sect­ing the nature of poet­ic feel­ing even as they expe­ri­ence it through their own mean­der­ing reflec­tions.

Ivor’s brief vis­it now feels like a metaphor for the entire human expe­ri­ence they are try­ing to under­stand. Beau­ty comes, leaves behind a mark, and dis­ap­pears before it can be ful­ly grasped. His poem, though root­ed in a moment, becomes a stand-in for how lan­guage tries to pin down some­thing too flu­id to hold. Crome, in this light, isn’t just a place—it’s a frame for pass­ing impres­sions, tem­po­rary yet touch­ing. Denis’s real­iza­tion that even beau­ti­ful words lose their mag­ic when reduced to mere def­i­n­i­tion echoes his own expe­ri­ence with love, art, and self-aware­ness. Every­thing feels del­i­cate and eas­i­ly shat­tered by truth. Yet that del­i­ca­cy is also what makes moments, like poems or peo­ple, mem­o­rable.

As the chap­ter clos­es, it becomes clear that lan­guage is both a tool and a trap. It shapes emo­tion, but it can also flat­ten it. Denis is left sus­pend­ed in this aware­ness, caught between the poet­ic ide­al and the lim­its of under­stand­ing. And in this space, the nov­el qui­et­ly under­scores one of its cen­tral themes—that not every­thing mean­ing­ful needs to be explained. Some things are felt best when left a lit­tle unclear, just like Ivor’s charm­ing good­bye, which says much, and explains noth­ing.