God and the Man by Robert W. Buchanan — Read

Thus it befell that we two abode together in the same dwelling, if I may call that a dwelling which, with Nature helping me, I fashioned with my rude hands: so near to each other that we could hear each other breathing, yet so far from each other that we never exchanged look or word. As far as might be, I averted my soul as a man averts his face--avoiding him in the daytime, forgetting him in the silence of the night; yet all in vain; for I was conscious of him unceasingly, and his shadow darkened my most secret thoughts.

I have read somewhere, in some old book or newspaper, of two poor sisters who, full of an unnatural hate, dwelt together like this in the same room in a great town; being too poor to take separate lodgings, they divided their wretched room by a line made with chalk across the floor; and so, with that chalk line only between them, abode in silence for a score of weary years; until one was carried out feet foremost, and the other, still cruel and unforgiving, was left alone. Of such hard stuff, I know, some hearts are made; of rock instead of flesh, and hard as the upper and nether millstone. Yet these foolish women had busy sounds of life all round to cheer them-- the tramp of feet, voices, and all the motion of a great city; while we, whose hearts were no less hard, and whose condition was surely as sorry in the sight of God, had only the naked heavens, and the troubled see, and the punctual changes of darkness and of light.