Expressive means and Stylistic devices

The story under analysis isn't very big, but it is overrun with expressive means and stylistic devices.

The beginning of the story starts with the emphatic construction: "That it what Trysdale was doing", which emphasizes the relation of the time. In the first paragraph is capitalization - Time. The author shows us a importance of it.

The story is full of epithets, most of which are related to Trysdale: a swift, scarifying retrospect; incontinent admirers; his large pride hurt vanity; or a singular-looking green plant, i.e. cactus. 

Metaphors are employed to show how unfeeling he was: he saw all the garbs of pretence and egoism; the garment of his soul; she insisted on the placing him upon a pedestal; and she became: turned to snow and ice.

Other lexical stylistic devices such as:

- simile:  white favors like stars upon their coats shone, he had absorbed the oblation as a desert drinks the rain;

- oxymoron: sullen exultation;                                                                    

- hyperbole: for the thousandth time, supernatural number are emloyed in the text. 

To emphasize the whole utterance the writer uses enumeration in his story several times: his own innermost, unmitigated, arid unbedecked himself; that swift, limpid, upward look.

To impart imagery the author uses personification: garbs of pretence now turn to rags of folly; the garment of his soul must have appeared sorry and threadbare; rain that can coax from it no promice of blossom or fruit; his large pride and hurt vanity kept him from seeking her; the leaves are reaching out and beckoning you.

To show the state of pondering the problem we come across:

- rhetorical questions: Vanity or conceit?; Why had he ended thus?; Where were his fault?; Who had been to blame?

- aposiopesis: But why...; If...                                                                                  

- inversion: Indeed, his conceit had crumbled. The tide had so suddenly turned. Without protest, he allowed her to twine about his brow this spurious bay of Spanish scholarship. How glad. how shy, how tremulous she was.

- separation: There had been no quarell between them, nothing.                                 

- detachement: He could not, now, for the pain of it, allow his mind to dwell upon the memory. The next      day he waited, impatient, in his rooms for the word. 

- parallelism: He could have sworn, and he could swear now.                                                                    

Trough out the story we collide with the exclamations: But, alas! How glad. how shy, how tremulous she was! Come now! Hallo!

To show the intensity of the emotions the author uses gradation: she looked at him, breathless, wondering, eager. 

Polysyndeton is used to show the Trysdale's advantages: high attributes and excellencies and talents.

Incomplete sentences, such as: Know the species? Know any Spanish, Trysdale?, and elliptical sentence, such as: A present from a friend can be seen in the dialogue between Trysdale and Carruthers.