There was a stranger at the table and in all its sweet, familiar
places, and she was sure that to her he always would be a stranger.
Something was said or done that put them farther apart every day. She
could not understand how any Sandal could be so absolutely out of her
love and sympathy. Who has not experienced these invasions of hostile
natures? Alien voices, characters fundamentally different, yet bound to
them by natural ties which the soul refuses to recognize.
The somberness of her thoughts affected her surroundings very much as
rain affects the atmosphere. The hills looked melancholy: she was aware
of every stone on the road. Alas! this morning she had begun to grow
old, for she felt that she had _a past_,--a past that could never
return. Hitherto her life had been to-day and to-morrow, and to-morrow
always in the sunshine. Hitherto the thought of Stephen had been blended
with something that was to happen. Now she knew she must always be
remembering the days that for them would come no more. She found herself
reviewing even her former visits to Up-Hill. In them also change had
begun. And it is over the young, sorrow triumphs most cruelly. They are
so easily wounded, so inapt to resist, so harassed by scruples, so
astonished at troubles they cannot comprehend, that their very
sensitiveness prepares them for suffering. Very bitter tears are shed
before we are twenty years old.
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