r order and the seemliness of walls. For the
moment, she felt safe. The child was not in evidence, innocently calling
the eye to his mysterious golden beauty. Tenney had been less irascible
all the forenoon because he had acquired a fortunate control over his
foot, and (she thought it shyly, yet believingly) the Lord Jesus Christ
was with them. Disregarded or not, in these moments of wild disordered
living, He was there.

She heard sleigh-bells, and looked out. Tenney glanced up over his
glasses, an unwonted look, curiously like benevolence. She liked that
look. It always gave her a thrill of faith that sometime, by a miracle,
it might linger for more than the one instant of a changed visual focus.
She caught it now, with that responsive hope of its continuance, and
knew, for the first time, what it recalled to her: the old minister
beyond Mountain Brook looked over his glasses in precisely that way,
kindly, gentle, and forgiving. But mingled with the remembrance, came
the nearing of the bells and the shock to her heart in the man they
heralded: Eugene Martin, driving fast, and staring at the house. The
horse was moving with a fine jaunty action when Martin pulled him up,
held him a quieting minute, and got out. He paused an instant, his hand
on the robe, as if uncertain how long he should stay, seemed to decide
against covering the horse and ran up the path. He must have seen Tira
and Tenney, each at a window, but his eyes were on the woman only. Half
way along the path, he took off his hat and waved it at her in
exaggerated salute, as if bidding her rejoice that he had come. In the
same instant he seemed, for the first time, to see Tenney. His eyes
rested on him with a surprise excellently feigned. He replaced his hat,
turned about like a man blankly disconcerted and went back down the
path, with the decisive tread of one who cannot take himself off too
soon. He stepped into the sleigh and, drawing the robe about him, drove
off, the horse answering buoyantly. Tira sat, the stillest thing out of
a wood where stalking danger lurks, her eyes on her sewing. Tenney was
staring at her; she knew it, and could not raise her lids. Often she
failed to meet his glance because she so shrank, not from his conviction
of her guilt, but the fear of seeing what she must remember in blank
night watches, to shudder over. For things were different at night,
things you could bear quite well by day. Now he spoke, with a restrained
certaint