“I should not have known you, Beulah.  You have altered surprisingly.”  His eyes wandered wonderingly over her features.  She was pale and breathless; her lips trembled violently, and there was a strange gleam in her large, eager eyes.  She did not reply, but stood looking up intently into his handsome face.  Then she shivered; the long, black lashes drooped; her white fingers relaxed their clasp of his, and she sat down on the sofa near.  Ah! her womanly intuitions, infallible as Ithuriel’s spear, told her that he was no longer the Eugene she had loved so devotedly.  An iron hand seemed to clutch her heart, and again a shudder crept over her as he seated himself beside her, saying: 

“I am very much pained to find you here.  I am just from Dr. Hartwell’s, where I expected to see you.”

He paused, for something about her face rather disconcerted him, and he took her hand again in his.

“How could you expect to find me there, after reading my last letter?”

“I still hoped that your good sense would prevent your taking such an extraordinary step.”

She smiled icily, and answered: 

“Is it so extraordinary, then, that I should desire to maintain my self-respect?”

“It would not have been compromised by remaining where you were.”

“I should scorn myself were I willing to live idly on the bounty of one upon whom I have no claim.”

“You are morbidly fastidious, Beulah.”

Her eyes flashed, and, snatching her hand from his, she asked, with curling lips:  “Eugene, if I prefer to teach for a support, why should you object?”

“Simply because you are unnecessarily lowering yourself in the estimation of the community.  You will find that the circle which a residence under Dr. Hartwell’s roof gave you the entree of, will look down with contempt upon a subordinate teacher in a public school—­”

“Then, thank Heaven, I am forever shut out from that circle!  Is my merit to be gauged by the cost of my clothes or the number of fashionable parties I attend, think you?”

“Assuredly, Beulah, the things you value so lightly are the standards of worth and gentility in the community you live in, as you will unfortunately find.”

She looked at him steadily, with grief, and scorn, and wonder in her deep, searching eyes, as she exclaimed: 

“Oh, Eugene! what has changed you so, since the bygone years when in the asylum we talked of the future? of laboring, conquering, and earning homes for ourselves!  Oh, has the foul atmosphere of foreign lands extinguished all your selfrespect?  Do you come back sordid and sycophantic, and the slave of opinions you would once have utterly detested?  Have you narrowed your soul and bowed down before the miserable standard which every genuine, manly spirit must loathe?  Oh! has it come to this?  Has it come to this?” Her voice was broken and bitter, scalding tears of shame and grief gushed over her cheeks.