She hardly ever thought of him. He had worn a place for himself in some corner of her heart, as a sea shell, always boring against the rock, might do. The making of the place had been her pain. But now the shell was safely in the rock. It was lodged, and ground no longer.

The passage describes how acute emotional pain can harden into a quiet, enduring residue. The image of a seashell boring into rock suggests a slow, abrasive process: love, grief, or betrayal repeatedly “grinds” at the self until it creates a permanent cavity. Once the shell is “lodged,” the suffering is no longer active; it has become part of her inner landscape—an old wound turned into a scar. The line “She hardly ever thought of him” underscores that forgetting is not the same as healing: the person’s significance remains embedded, but it no longer demands daily attention. It is a portrait of emotional accommodation rather than erasure.