From other sources--his letters to the parson, traders between
Philadelphia and the West--she knew other things: he had risen in the world,
was a judge, often leading counsel in great cases, was almost a great man.
She planted her pride, her gratitude, her happiness, on this new soil: they
were the few seed that a woman in the final years will sow in a window-box
and cover the window-pane and watch and water and wake and think of in the
night--she who was used once to range the fields.
But never from the first to last had she received a letter from him that was
transparent; the mystery stayed unlifted; she had to accept the constancy of
his friendship without its confidence. Question or chiding of course there
never was from her; inborn refinement alone would have kept her from
curiosity or prying; but she could not put away the conviction that the
concealment which he steadily adhered to was either delicately connected
with his marriage or registered but too plainly some downward change in
himself. Which was it, or was it both? Had he too missed happiness? Missed
it as she had--by a union with a perfectly commonplace, plodding,
unimaginative, unsympathetic, unrefined nature? And was it a mercy to be
able to remember him, not to know him?
These thoughts filled her so often, so often! For into the busiest life--the
life that toils to shut out thought--the inevitable leisure will come; and
with the leisure will return the dreaded emptiness, the loneliness, the
never stifled need of sympathy, affection, companionship--for that world of
two outside of which every other human being is a stranger.
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