No wonder, then, that she should be shaken by a doubt of her own identity; and having reached her room she paused upon the threshold and looked around as if to satisfy herself by all those silent witnesses which made it truth.  There was the chair in which she had so often sat plying her needle with such tardy grace while her impatient thoughts did battle with the humdrum, narrow life she led.  How she had beat against the fate which seemed to promise naught but that dull round of commonplace events in which her early years had passed away!  How as a gall and fret had come the thought of Reuben’s proffered love, because it shadowed forth the level of respectable routine, the life she then most dreaded!  To be courted and sought after, to call forth love, jealousy and despair, to be looked up to, thought well of, praised, admired,—­these were the delights she had craved and these the longings she had had granted.  And a sigh from the depths of that chastened heart rendered the bitter tribute paid by all to satiated vanity and outlived desire.  The dingy walls, the ill-assorted furniture (her mother’s pride in which had sometimes vexed her, sometimes made her laugh) now looked like childhood’s friends, whose faces stamp themselves upon our inmost hearts.  The light no longer seemed obscure, the room no longer gloomy, for each thing in it now was flooded by the tender light of memory—­that wondrous gift to man which those who only sail along life’s summer sea can never know in all the heights and depths revealed to storm-tossed hearts.

“What! you’ve come back?” a voice said in her ear; and looking round Eve saw it was Reuben, who had entered unperceived.  “There’s nothing fresh gone wrong?” he asked.

“No, nothing;” but the sad smile she tried to give him welcome with was so akin to tears that Reuben’s face assumed a look of doubt. “’Tis only that I’m thinking how I’m changed from what I was,” said Eve.  “Why, once I couldn’t bear this room and all the things about it; but now—­Oh, Reuben, my heart seems like to break because perhaps ’twill soon now come to saying good-bye to all of it for ever.”

Reuben winced:  “You’re fixed to go, then?”

“Yes, where Adam goes I shall go too:  don’t you think I should?  What else is left for me to do?”

“You feel, then, you’d be happy—­off with him—­away from all and—­everybody else?”

“Happy!  Should I be happy to know he’d gone alone—­happy to know I’d driven him away to some place where I wouldn’t go myself?” and Eve paused, shaking her head before she added, “If he can make another start in life—­try and begin again—­”

“You ought to help him to it,” said Reuben promptly:  “that’s very plain to see.  Oh, Eve, do you mind the times when you and me have talked of what we’d like to do—­how, never satisfied with what went on around, we wanted to be altogether such as some of those we’d heard and read about?  The way seems almost opened up to you, but what shall I do when all this is over and you are gone away?  I can’t go back and stick to trade again, working for nothing more but putting victuals in myself.”