showered upon her, she went out gently and on to her own place.
She felt in a very serious mood as she made her cup of coffee and cooked
herself a plate of bacon, and then sat down in the red glow of her
well-tended hearth to her solitary meal.

"Birds of a feather!" that hateful sentence echoed round her, until the
silent walls themselves seemed taunting her. Was she not, after all,
really akin to that old woman, and might she not some day end like her?
What was all her own drinking and card-playing and knocking about in the
saloons to end in? She shivered, and threw a frightened glance round
her. This girl, who would have laughed all sermons, advice, and
admonitions scornfully aside, was almost startled now into a sudden
reformation by the chance object-lesson of this afternoon. She could not
forget it, and in the silence the whole scene rose up vividly before
her. She began to long for Stephen to come and break the silence, and
glanced impatiently at the clock many times. He was coming in to town
that night, she knew. It was a relief such as she had never experienced
when at last he arrived, and she had not her own company only any
longer.

She was unusually silent all the evening. Stephen did not try to force
her into conversation; he was content to sit on the opposite side of the
hearth and let his eyes rest upon her in silence. She was paler, he
thought, as he watched the orange light from the flames play over the
oval face and throw up its regular lines. She was sitting sideways to
him, gazing absently into the heart of the glowing coals, and her
shadow, formed by the lamp between her and Stephen, fell strongly and
clearly outlined upon the opposite wall. Stephen sat in his corner and
gazed at it through half-closed eyes. He had been working hard all day,
and in the keen, biting air; the warmth and the rest were grateful to
him. The silence in the room had lasted so long that he began to feel
drowsy under the influence of this quiet warmth. He watched the shadow
sleepily, and dreamy fancies floated across his brain. The clean-cut,
delicate profile was magnified to colossal proportions on the blank
wall. So it seemed to Stephen that beautiful presence would dominate his
life, fill in completely the blank of his colourless existence, as the
large shadow filled the wall. Then, as his gaze followed its outlines,
he saw what his eyes had not found before: a huge upright line of shade,
formed by her chair back, ran u