So he went over the hill, and down the long road that had always led away into the world mysteriously when they had been younger. The road that was leading him away mysteriously into the world now. So she saw him trudging on through the rain; so she remembered afterwards that she had seen him, through the rain of Heaven and the rain of her tears.
END OF BOOK I
BOOK II
CHAPTER I
THE CALL OF THE WORLD
The capacity of the average human being to drift apart from his fellows, whether by accident or design; to take up new interests to the neglect of old ones; to regard as mere pleasant memories vital matters which but yesterday stirred the very soul of him; all these have done much to people the great world and to spread men over its surface—but have sometimes been disastrous for the individual. Men and women have told themselves, times without number, that in this way will they live without separation; in that fashion will they order their lives; and lo! in a moment grim Fate steps in; and they are flung apart almost before there is time for remonstrance.
In such cases, happily, the new interests assert themselves, and the man or the woman—easily adaptable—begins instantly to form new ties, and to think less and less regretfully of the old ones. It is a kindly law of Nature—a merciful law.
This is true, of course, in the vast majority of cases—but not in all. It was not true in the case of the girl Moira, for instance; because she rebelled fiercely against the sudden snatching of herself away from the old life—the rude dispersal of everything and everyone that had made up that life. Hers was not a nature formed for forgetfulness; more than that, the new life (or may we not rather call it existence?) into which she had gone proved so bare as to force her back, against her will almost, to those old and pleasant recollections for almost her only mental food.