He missed her more
keenly in the places where she had lived and moved than in a
neighborhood without the memory of her presence. The pang with which
lie parted from his home was weakened by the greater pang which had
preceded it.
It was a harder trial to Asenath. She shrank from the encounter with
new faces, and the necessity of creating new associations. There was a
quiet satisfaction in the ordered, monotonous round of her life, which
might be the same elsewhere, but here alone was the nook which held all
the morning sunshine she had ever known. Here still lingered the halo
of the sweet departed summer,--here still grew the familiar
wild-flowers which _the first_ Richard Hilton had gathered. This
was the Paradise in which the Adam of her heart had dwelt, before his
fall. Her resignation and submission entitled her to keep those pure
and perfect memories, though she was scarcely conscious of their true
charm. She did not dare to express to herself, in words, that one
everlasting joy of woman's heart, through all trials and sorrows,--"I
have loved, I have been beloved."
On the last "First-day" before their departure, she walked down the
meadows to the lonely brake between the hills.
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