Final answer:
The excerpts address memory, relationships, and historical context in a narrative, highlighting the layers of human experience and the passage of time.
Step-by-step explanation:
The passages provided reveal aspects of a narrative that focus on character relationships, feelings of surprise and timidity, and moments of introspection and retrospection. The characters experience late-romantic encounters and demonstrate the complexities of human connections and memory. Referencing a particular character's surprise after a long period of anticipation highlights the juxtaposition between expectation and reality. Moreover, the inclusion of a historical context with figures such as Elizabeth Macaulay-Lewis and Steven Zucker discussing an event occurring 'almost 1,000 years later' offers a contrasting layer of temporal awareness, emphasizing the varied nature of recollection and the passage of time.