th, a trimmed lamp, and the savory odor of well-cooked
food, were what Dale might be sure of finding at the evening hour; and
Mavis tried to give him something more. He must have peace at the end
of the day, and thus be able to forget the day's disappointments, no
matter how cruel they had been. She would not let him talk about the
business at night. She said he must just eat, rest, and then sleep;
but she allowed him to read, provided that he read real books and
magazines, not his ledgers or those horrid trade journals.

So after their supper they used to sit in the pleasant lamplight very
quietly, near together and yet scarcely speaking to each other,
feeling the restful joy of a companionship that had passed into that
deeper zone where silence can be more eloquent than words. He was
reading political economy for the purpose of opening his mind,
"extending the scope of one's int'lect," as he said himself, and she
watched him as he frowned at the page or puckered up his lips with a
characteristic doggedly questioning doubtfulness. Certainly no words
were needed then to enable her to interpret his thought. "Look here,
my lad"--that was how he was mentally addressing a famous author--"I'm
ready to go with you a fair distance; but I don't allow you to take
me an inch further than my reasoning faculty tells me you are on the
right road." When he frowned like this, she smiled and felt much
tenderness. He would always be the same obstinate old dear: ready to
set himself against the whole weight of immemorial authority, whether
in literature or everyday life.

She did not read, but with a large work-basket on a chair by her knees
continued busily sewing until bedtime. And the tenderness that she
felt as she stitched and stitched was overwhelmingly more than she
could feel even for Will. When her work itself made her smile, all the
intellectual expression seemed to go out of her face, and it really
expressed nothing but a blankly unthinking ecstasy, whereas her smile
at her husband just now had shown shrewd understanding, as well as
immense kindness. In fact, at such moments, only the outer case of
Mavis Dale remained in the snug little room, while the inward best
part of her had gone on a very long journey. She could not now see the
man with his book, or the walls of the room; the lamp had begun to
shine with ineffable radiance; and she was temporarily a sewing-woman
in paradise, stitching the ornamental flounces for dreams