now by the fire in the dining-room, his feet on the
fender, some books scattered around him, rapidly getting out with them
into a world where northeasters, nor high tides, nor his wife either,
ever came. She saw that in the half-frown with which he looked at her
over his spectacles.

"M. Jacobus!" she said.

"_Plait-il, Madame?_" and afterwards laid down his book, thinking the
figure before him could hardly be that of his matter-of-fact wife: which
was true enough,--for her heart was brimful of her little project and
the child, and the face, with its low forehead and resolute jaws, beamed
curiously young and eager. Her husband seated her, and stood leaning on
the mantel-shelf while she talked: he had all the courtesy of an
old-fashioned Frenchman towards women; and besides, M. Jacobus had a
keen eye for beauty in this the only woman he had ever loved.

"Go down, Jerome; the tide turns," she said. "Captain Lufflin is
watching it. Besides, I want this room to make ready for to-morrow."

M. Jacobus began, obedient as usual, to button his coat, muttering,
"To-morrow?" however, with a puzzled face.

"It is Christmas,"--with the repressed excitement now in her voice as in
her eyes. "I want that we shall keep the day this year; I have some
little plans"--

The skeptic's face altered; he lingered over the last button of the
coat.

"It is worth more to you than other days?"--dryly.

"We never observed it before. God has been so good to us, Jerome,--and
it is His day of the whole year,--the day," her voice sinking with an
inexpressible tenderness, "when Love came into the world as a little
child,--_as a little child._"

He looked at her wistfully for a moment, then took up his stick and an
hygrometer, saying, as he opened the door,--

"But hear to the cry of the sea! it grows more muffled and dull each
hour. If Death itself could speak, that is his voice, I think." He spoke
vaguely, with an anxious, absent look, then went groping down the dark
stairway. Presently she heard him come back hurriedly.

"Will it cost you much to give up this day, child?" he demanded, coming
close and putting his hand on her head. "I ask it of you. I must be with
you in your little plans, and"--

"Your mother kept it," interrupted she, sharply.

"I know,"--with dull, pained looks at the fire, at the night without,
everything but her face. "Her faith is not mine."

"No, Jerome," gently,--for she was tender with him always, when he
seem