dgment. She now saw that his
eyes had changed most. They gave the face its look of absence, of
dreaming awkwardness. They had the depth of a hazy sky at times, then
cleared to a coldly lucid glance that would see nothing ever to fear,
within or without; that would hide no falseness nor yet be deceived by
any--a deadly half-shut, appraising coolness that would know false from
true, even though they mated amicably and distractingly in one mind.

The effect of this glance which she found upon herself from time to time
was to make Nancy suspect herself--to question her motives and try her
defenses. To her amazement she found these latter weak under Bernal's
gaze, and there grew in her a tender remorse for the injustice she had
done her husband. From little pricking suspicions on the first day she
came on the last to conviction. It seemed that being with Bernal had
opened her eyes to Allan's worth. She had narrowly, flippantly misjudged
a good man--good in all essentials. She was contrite for her unwifely
lack of abnegation. She began to see herself and Allan with Bernal's
eyes: she was less than she had thought--he was more. Bernal had proved
these things to her all unconsciously. Now her heart was flooded with
gratitude for his simple, ready, heartfelt praise of his brother--of his
unfailing good-temper, his loyalty, his gifts, his modesty so often
distressed by outspoken admiration of his personal graces. She listened
and applauded with a heart that renewed itself in all good resolves of
devotion. Even when Bernal talked of himself, he made her feel that she
had been unjust to Allan.

Little by little she drew many things from him--the story of his
journeyings and of his still more intricate mental wanderings. And it
thrilled her to think he had come back with a message--even though he
already doubted himself. Sometimes he would be jocular about it and
again hot with a passion to express himself.

"Nance," he said on another night, "when you have a real faith in God a
dead man is a miracle not less than a living--and a live man dying is
quite as wondrous as a dead man living. Do you know, I was staggered one
day by discovering that the earth didn't give way when I stepped on it?
The primitive man knowing little of physics doesn't know that a child's
hand could move the earth through space--but for a certain mysterious
resistance. That's God. I felt him all that day, at every step, pushing
the little globe back under me-