It is two years since the day of separation between Irene and her

husband. Just two years. And she is sitting in the portico at Ivy

Cliff with her father, looking down upon the river that lies

gleaming in sunshine--not thinking of the river, however, nor of

anything in nature.

They are silent and still--very still, as if sleep had locked their

senses. He is thin and wasted as from long sickness, and she looks

older by ten years. There is no fine bloom on her cheeks, from which

the fullness of youth has departed.

It is a warm June day, the softest, balmiest, brightest day the year

has given. The air comes laden with delicate odors and thrilling

with bird melodies, and, turn the eye as it will, there is a feast

of beauty.

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, "So perish the memory of our acquaintance!"




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