it ought to be between husbands and wives. The wife ought to look
up to her husband as a little child does." Now, much as Hetty loved Dr.
Eben, passionately as her whole life centred around him, there had never
been such a feeling as this: they were the heartiest of comrades, but
each life was on a plane of absolute independence. Hetty pondered much
on this.

XI.

One day, as they sat by Rachel's bed, the doctor had been counting her
pulse. Her little white hand looked like a baby's hand in his. Holding
it up, he said to Hetty:

"Look at that hand. It couldn't do much work, could it!"

Involuntarily Hetty stretched out her large, well-knit brown hand, and
put it by the side of Rachel's. There are many men who would have
admired Hetty's hand the more of the two. It was a much more significant
hand. To one who could read palmistry, it meant all that Hetty was; and
it was symmetrical and firm. But, at that moment, to Dr. Eben it looked
large and masculine.

"Oh, take it away, Hetty!" he said, thoughtlessly. "It looks like a
man's hand by the side of this child's."

Hetty laughed. She thought so too. But the words remained in her mind,
and allied themselves to words that had gone before, and to things that
had happened, and to thoughts which were restlessly growing, growing in
Hetty's bosom.

If Rachel had remained an invalid, probably Hetty's thoughts of her, as
connected with her husband, would never have gone beyond this vague
stage which we have tried to describe. She would have been to Hetty only
the suggestion of a possible ideal wife, who, had she lived, and had she
entered into Dr. Eben's life, might have made him happier than Hetty
could. But Rachel grew better and stronger every day. Early in the
spring she began to walk,--creeping about, at first, like a little child
just learning to walk, by pushing a chair before her. Then she walked
with a cane and her father's arm; then with the cane alone; and at last,
one day in May,--oddly enough it was the anniversary of Hetty's
wedding-day,--Dr. Eben burst into her room, exclaiming: "Hetty! Hetty!
Rachel has walked several rods alone. She is cured! She is going to be
as well as anybody."

The doctor's face was flushed with excitement. Never had he had what
seemed to him so great a professional triumph. It was the physician and
not the man that felt so intensely. But Hetty could not wholly know
this. She had shared his deep anxiety about the case; and s