dren beside them, and then
lead the chorus in a spirited chant of these names:--

"Isa Vinda Exene Bloom!
Ella Minda Almarine Bloom!"

repeating this a long time until they were all breathless, and the
solemn twins themselves were looking embarrassed and rather foolishly
pleased.

As he observed her day by day in her joyous growth, it was inevitable
that he came more and more to observe the woman who was caring for her,
and it was thus on one night in late summer that he awoke to an awful
truth,--a truth that brought back the words of the woman's former
husband with a new meaning.

He had heard Prudence say to her, "You are a pretty mamma," and suddenly
there came rushing upon him the sum of all the impressions his eyes had
taken of her since that day when the Bishop had spoken. He trembled and
became weak under the assault, feeling that in some insidious way his
strength had been undermined. He went out into the early evening to be
alone, but she, presently, having put the child to bed, came and stood
near, silently in the doorway.

He looked and saw she was indeed made new, restored to the lustre and
fulness of her young womanhood. He remembered then that she had long
been silent when he came near her, plainly conscious of his presence but
with an apparent constraint, with something almost tentative in her
manner. With her return to health and comeliness there had come back to
her a thousand little graces of dress and manner and speech. She drew
him, with his starved love of beauty and his need of companionship; drew
him with a mighty power, and he knew it at last. He remembered how he
had felt and faintly thrilled under a certain soft suppression in her
tones when she had spoken to him of late; this had drawn him, and the
new light in her eyes and her whole freshened womanhood, even before he
knew it. Now that he did know it he felt himself shaken and all but
lost; clutching weakly at some support that threatened every moment to
give way.

And she was his wife, his who had starved year after year for the light
touch of a woman's hand and the tones of her voice that should be for
him alone. He knew now that he had ached and sickened in his yearning
for this, and she stood there for him in the soft night. He knew she was
waiting, and he knew he desired above all things else to go to her; that
the comfort of her, his to take, would give him new life, new desires,
new powers; that with her he would revive as