Even to Eve he could not open out his mind clearly, for, unless to one
born and bred among them, the dangers and interests of the free-traders
were matters quite beyond comprehension; so that now, when Eve was
pleading, with all her powers of persuasion, that for her sake Adam
would give up this life of reckless daring, the seemingly deaf ear he
turned to her entreaties was dulled through perplexity, and not, as she
believed, from obstinacy.
Eve, in her turn, could not be thoroughly explicit. There was a
skeleton cupboard, the key of which she was hiding from Adam's sight;
for it was not entirely "for her sake" she desired him to abandon his
present occupation: it was because, in the anxiety she had recently
undergone, in the terror which had been forced upon her, the glaze of
security had been roughly dispelled, and the life in all its
lawlessness and violence had stood forth before her. The warnings and
denunciations which only a few hours before, when Reuben May had
uttered them, she had laughed to scorn as idle words, now rang in her
ears like a fatal knell: the rope he had said would hang them all was
then a sieve of unsown hemp, since sprung up, and now the fatal cord
which dangled dangerously near.
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