Why , I -- I -- want my wife . I 've come home . '' `` This is not your home . I 'm no wife of yours . You made your choice when you went away , '' Isabella had replied . Then she had gone in , shut the door , and locked it in his face . David had stood there for a few minutes like a man stunned . Then he had turned and walked away up the lane under the birches . He said nothing -- then or at any other time . From that day no reference to his wife or her concerns ever crossed his lips . He went directly to the harbor , and shipped with Captain Barrett for another voyage . When he came back from that in a month 's time , he bought a small house and had it hauled to the `` Cove , '' a lonely inlet from which no other human habitation was visible . Between his sea voyages he lived there the life of a recluse ; fishing and playing his violin were his only employments . He went nowhere and encouraged no visitors . Isabella Spencer also had adopted the tactics of silence . When the scandalized Chiswicks , Aunt Jane at their head , tried to patch up the matter with argument and entreaty , Isabella met them stonily , seeming not to hear what they said , and making no response . She worsted them totally . As Aunt Jane said in disgust , `` What can you do with a woman who wo n't even TALK ? '' Five months after David Spencer had been turned from his wife 's door , Rachel was born . Perhaps , if David had come to them then , with due penitence and humility , Isabella 's heart , softened by the pain and joy of her long and ardently desired motherhood might have cast out the rankling venom of resentment that had poisoned it and taken him back into it .
But David had not come ; he gave no sign XXXXX knowing or caring that his once longed-for child had been born .
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