He had been away four years and it was time for him to return.

She told him why.

She wrote what they, in their loving fear of inflicting pain, would never have dared to say.

At the end, in a postscript, she had asked for his congratulations on her approaching marriage.
To Nathaniel this letter had been a torment.

He saw the truth as he had never seen it before--that his place was back there in Vermont, with his father and mother; and that there was something unpleasant in thinking of the girl as belonging to another.