h? in a week? now at once? In one flash of vision Reuben
saw the furniture polished and comfortably arranged, the room smartened
up and looking its best with a blazing fire and a singing kettle, and a
cozy meal ready laid for two people; and then all they would have to say
to one another--on his part much to hear and little to tell, for his
life had jogged on at a very commonplace trot, his business neither
better nor worse, but still, with the aid of the little sum his more
than rigid economy had enabled him to save, they might make a fair
start, free from all debt and able to pay their way.

These thoughts only occupied the time which Reuben took to undo the
complicated folds by which, before the days of envelopes, correspondents
endeavored to baffle the curiosity of those who sought to know more than
was intended for them. But what is this? for Reuben's eyes had been so
greedy to suck up the words that he had not given his mind time to grasp
their meaning: "Not coming back! never--any more!"--"I like the place,
the people, and, above all, my relations, so very much that I should
never be happy now away from them."

He repeated the words over again and again before he seemed to have the
least comprehension of what they meant: then, in a stupor of dull
despondency, he read on to the end, and learnt that all his hopes were
over, that his life was a blank, and that the thing he had dreaded so
much as to cheat himself into the belief that it could never happen had
come to pass. And yet he was still Reuben May, and lived and breathed,
and hadn't much concern beyond the thought of how he should best send
the things she had left to Polperro--the place she never intended to
leave, the place she now could never be happy away from.

Later on, a hundred wild schemes and mad desires wrestled and fought,
trying to combat with his judgment and put to flight his sense of
resolution; but now, as in the first moment of death, with the vain hope
of realizing his loss, the mourner sits gazing at the inanimate form
before him, so Reuben, holding the letter in his hands, returned again
and again to the words which had dealt death to his hopes and told him
that the love he lived for no longer lived for him. For Eve had been
very emphatic in enforcing this resolve, and had so strongly worded her
decision that, try as he would, Reuben could find no chink by which a
ray of hope might gain admittance: all was dark with the gloom of
despair,