child's hand and placed it in her husband's; her own
fingers shook. But Augustine drew back sharply, doubling his arm against
his breast, though not wavering in his gaze at the stranger.

Sir Hugh laughed at the decisive rejection. "Friendship's on one side,
till later," he said.

* * * * *

When her husband had gone Amabel went out into the sycamore wood. It was
a pale, cool evening. The sun had set and the sky beyond the sycamores
was golden. Above, in a sky of liquid green, the evening star shone
softly.

A joy, sweet, cold, pure, like the evening, was in her heart. She
stopped in the midst of the little wood among the trees, and stood
still, closing her eyes.

Something old was coming back to her; something new was being given. The
memory of her mother's eyes was in it, of the simple prayers taught her
by her mother in childhood, and the few words, rare and simple, of the
presence of God in the soul. But her girlish prayer, her girlish thought
of God, had been like a thread-like, singing brook. What came to her now
grew from the brook-like running of trust and innocence to a widening
river, to a sea that filled her, over-flowed her, encompassed her, in
whose power she was weak, through whose power her weakness was uplifted
and made strong.

It was as if a dark curtain of fear and pain lifted from her soul,
showing vastness, and deep upon deep of stars. Yet, though this that
came to her was so vast, it made itself small and tender, too, like the
flowers glimmering about her feet, the breeze fanning her hair and
garments, the birds asleep in the branches above her. She held out her
hands, for it seemed to fall like dew, and she smiled, her face
uplifted.

* * * * *

She did not often see her husband in the quiet years that followed. She
did not feel that she needed to see him. It was enough to know that he
was there, good and beautiful.

She knew that she idealised him, that in ordinary aspects he was a
happy, easy man-of-the-world; but that was not the essential; the
essential in him was the pity, the tenderness, the comprehension that
had responded to her great need. He was very unconscious of aims or
ideals; but when the time for greatness came he showed it as naturally
and simply as a flower expands to light. The thought of him henceforth
was bound up with the thought of her religion; nothing of rapture or
ecstasy was in it; it was quiet and grave, a revel