Yet, the odors are not perceived, nor the music heard, nor the beauty seen by that musing old man and his silent daughter.  Their thoughts are not in the present, but far back in the unhappy past, the memories of which, awakened by the scene and season, have come flowing in a strong tide upon them.

Two years!  They have left the prints of their heavy feet upon the life of Irene, and the deep marks will never be wholly obliterated.  She were less than human if this were not so.  Two years!  Yet, not once in that long, heart-aching time had she for a single moment looked backward in weakness.  Sternly holding to her act as right, she strengthened herself in suffering, and bore her pain as if it were a decree of fate.  There was no anger in her heart, nor anything of hardness toward her husband.  But there was no love, nor tender yearning for conjunction—­at least, nothing recognized as such in her own consciousness.

Not since the days Irene left the house of her husband had she heard from him directly; and only two or three times indirectly.  She had never visited the city since her flight therefrom, and all her pleasant and strongly influencing associations there were, in consequence, at an end.  Once her very dear friend Mrs. Talbot came up to sympathize with and strengthen her in the fiery trial through which she was passing.  She found Irene’s truer friend, Rosa Carman, with her; and Rose did not leave them alone for a moment at a time.  All sentiments that she regarded as hurtful to Irene in her present state of mind she met with her calm, conclusive mode of reasoning, that took away the specious force of the sophist’s dogmas.  But her influence was chiefly used in the repression of unprofitable themes, and the introduction of such as tended to tranquilize the feelings, and turn the thoughts of her friend away from the trouble that was lying upon her soul like a suffocating nightmare.  Mrs. Talbot was not pleased with her visit, and did not come again.  But she wrote several times.  The tone of her letters was not, however, pleasant to Irene, who was disturbed by it, and more bewildered than enlightened by the sentiments that were announced with oracular vagueness.  These letters were read to Miss Carman, on whom Irene was beginning to lean with increasing confidence.  Rose did not fail to expose their weakness or fallacy in such clear light that Irene, though she tried to shut her eyes against the truth presented by Rose, could not help seeing it.  Her replies were not, under these circumstances, very satisfactory, for she was unable to speak in a free, assenting, confiding spirit.  The consequence was natural.  Mrs. Talbot ceased to write, and Irene did not regret the broken correspondence.  Once Mrs. Lloyd wrote.  When Irene broke the seal and let her eyes rest upon the signature, a shudder of repulsion ran through her frame, and the letter dropped from her hands to the floor.  As if possessed by a spirit whose influence over her she could not control, she caught up the unread sheet and threw it into the fire.  As the flames seized upon and consumed it, she drew a long breath and murmured,