and patient you are in your sickness," he said, gazing down
into the quiet, wistful face that was so honest and true, yet so
thoroughly prosaic and commonplace. "What a sermon you have been
preaching me, sitting here so uncomplainingly."

"Do you think so?" she said, looking up gratefully. "I am glad. I so
want to do my duty by you."

He had meant to kiss her as he bent over her, though such caresses
were rare between them, but there was something in her tones that
chilled him, and he merely raised a tress of her hair to his lips
instead. At the door he bade her a pleasant farewell, but his
countenance grew sorrowful as he went down the path.

"Duty," he murmured, "always duty, never love. Well, the fault is my
own that we were ever married. God help me to be true and kind to her
always. She shall never know that I miss anything in her."

And he preached to his congregation that afternoon a sermon on
burden-bearing, showing how each should bear his own burden
patiently,--not darkening the lives of others by complaint, but always
saying loving words, no matter how much of heartache lay beneath them.
He told how near God is to us all, ready to heal and to strengthen;
and closed by showing how sweet and beautiful even a common life may
grow through brave and self-sacrificing endurance of trouble.

It was a helpful sermon, a sermon that brought the listeners nearer
God. More than one heart was touched by those earnest words that
seemed to breathe divine sympathy and compassion.

He went home feeling more at peace than he had done for many days. His
wife's room was still, as he entered it. She was in her easy-chair at
the window, lying back among the pillows asleep. Her face was flushed
and feverish, her long lashes wet with tears. The wraps had fallen
away from her, and he stooped over to replace them. As he did so her
lips moved in her half-delirious slumber, and she murmured some name
sounding like his own. A wild throb of joy thrilled through him, and
he bent closer to listen. Again she spoke the name, spoke it
sorrowfully, longingly. It was the name of her lover drowned at sea.

The long, nervous fingers that held the half-drawn wraps shook
convulsively as with acutest pain, then drew the coverings gently
around her.

"God help her, God help her!" he murmured, as he turned softly away,
his eyes filling with tears,--tears for her sorrow rather than his
own.

CHAPTER III.

A DARKENED FIRESIDE.