They had been left with the Shakers by their respective parents ten
years before, and, growing up in the faith, they formally joined the Community
when they reached the age of discretion. Thus they had known each other from
early childhood, never in the familiar way common to the children of the
world, but with the cool, cheerful, casual, wholly impersonal attitude of
Shaker friendship, a relation seemingly outside of and superior to sex, a
relation more like that of two astral bodies than the more intimate one of a
budding Adam and Eve.
When and where had this relationship changed its color and meaning? Neither
Nathan nor Hetty could have told. For years Nathan had sat at his end of the
young men's bench at the family or the public meeting, with Hetty exactly
opposite him at the end of the girls' row, and for years they had looked
across the dividing space at each other with unstirred pulses. The rows of
Sisters sat in serene dignity, one bench behind another, and each Sister was
like unto every other in Nathan's vague, dreamy, boyishly indifferent eyes.
Some of them were seventy and some seventeen, but each modest figure sat in
its place with quiet folded hands.
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