Nor was she any longer tormented by a sense of isolation.

For, as she recognized, he stole nothing away which heretofore belonged to her.

Rather did he add his own by no means inconsiderable self to the sum of her possessions .-- And in that last fact she probably touched the real crux, the real strain, of the present, to her disintegrating, situation.

For in him, and in his relation to her, a wonderful and very precious gift was bestowed upon her, namely another human life to love and live for .-- Bestowed on her, moreover, without asking or choice of her own, arbitrarily, through the claim of his and her common ancestry and the profound moral and spiritual obligations, the mysterious affinities, which a common ancestry creates.
Had she possessed this gift from childhood, had it taken its natural place in her experience through the linked and orderly progress of the years, it would have been wholly welcome, wholly profitable and sweet.
But it was sprung upon her from the outside, quite astoundingly ready-made.

It bore down on her, and at a double, foot, horse, and siege guns complete.