We talked little during those first days of our home-coming, but we set the house in order, we recalled to the lonely rooms the old associations, and we quietly took up the cares and burdens we had dropped.

It was not easy at first, and there were days when we were both heartsore; but we waited and worked and hoped.

Our neighbours found us more silent and absorbed than of old, but neither that change nor our absence seemed to have made any impression upon them.

Indeed, we even doubted if they knew that we had taken such a journey.

Day by day we stepped into the old places and fell into the old habits, until all the broken threads of our life were reunited and we were apparently as much a part of the world as if we had never gone out of it and found a nobler and happier sphere.
But there came to us gradually a clear consciousness that, though we were in the world, we were not of it, nor ever again could be.