Yet it was not wholly unfamiliar, for it belonged to the days when he courted her, when she seemed to have got nearer to him than in the more intimate relations of married life.
"Is--is that all you have to say to me, Shiel ?" she asked, with a swelling note of feeling in her voice; while there was also emerging in her look an elusive pride which might quickly become sharp indignation.
That her deserter should greet her so after five years of such offence to a woman's self-respect, as might entitle her to become a rebel against matrimony, was too cruel to be borne.

This feeling suddenly became alive in her, in spite of a joy in her heart different from that which she had ever known; in defiance of the fact that now that they were together once more, what would she not do to prevent their being driven apart again! "After abandoning me for five years, is that all you have to say to me, Shiel?
After I have suffered before the world--" He threw up his arms with a passionate gesture.

"The world!" he exclaimed--"the devil take the world! I've been out of it for five years, and well out of it.

What do I care for the world!" She drew herself up in a spirit of defence.

"It isn't what you care for the world, but I had to live in it--alone, and because I was alone, eyebrows were lifted.