politics, forgot everything. He lifted his little son in his arms and
shook the boughs and saw the child run after the falling apples,
stumbling and falling but never hurting himself.

The quarrels of the day died down; the evening grew more beautiful
under the boughs, and this intimate life round their apple-tree was
strangely intense, and it grew more and more intense as the light died.
Every now and then the child came to show them an apple he had picked
up, and Ned said: "He thinks he has found the largest apples that have
ever been seen." The secret of their lives seemed to approach and at
every moment they expected to hear it. The tired child came to his
mother and asked to be taken on her lap. An apple fell with a thud, the
stars came out, and Ned carried his son, now half asleep, into the
house, and they undressed him together, having forgotten, seemingly,
their differences of opinion.

But after dinner when they were alone in the drawing-room their
relations grew strained again. Ned wanted to explain to Ellen that his
movement was not anti-clerical, but he could see she did not wish to
hear. He watched her take up her work and wondered what he could say to
persuade her, and after a little while he began to think of certain
pieces of music. But to go to the piano would be like a hostile act.
The truth was that he had looked forward to the evening he was going to
spend with her, he had imagined an ideal evening with her and could not
reconcile himself to the loss. "The hour we passed in the garden was
extraordinarily intense," he said to himself, and he regretted ever
having talked to her about anything except simple things. "It is unwise
of a man to make a comrade of his wife.... Now I wonder if she would be
angry with me if I went to the piano--if I were to play something very
gently? Perhaps a book would seem less aggressive." He went into his
study and fetched his book, and very soon forgot Ellen. But she had not
forgotten him, and she raised her eyes to look at him from time to
time, knowing quite well that he was reading the book out of which he
drew the greater part of his doctrine that he had alluded to on his way
home, and that he had called the Gospel of Life.

He turned the pages, and seeing that his love of her had been absorbed
by the book, she stuck her needle in her work, folded it up, and put it
into the work-basket.

"I am going to bed, Ned." He looked up, and she saw he had returned
from a w