en, and hence perhaps a certain
something wrought in his blood which tormented her, because she could not
reconcile it with Agapitus' doctrine, but which she nevertheless dared
not attempt to oppose because her taciturn husband never spoke out with
so much cheerfulness and frankness as when he might talk of these things
with his sons and their friends, who often accompanied them to the oasis.
Certainly, it could be nothing sinful that at this particular moment
seemed to light up her husband's face, and restore his youth.

"They just are men," said she to herself, "and in many things they have
the advantage of us women. The old man looks as he did on his
wedding-day! Polykarp is the very image of him, as every one says, and
now, looking at the father, and recalling to my mind how the boy looked
when he told me how he could not refrain from making Sirona's portrait, I
must say that I never saw such a likeness in the whole course of my
life."

He bid her a friendly good night, and extinguished the lamp. She would
willingly have said a loving word to him, for his contented expression
touched and comforted her, but that would just then have been too much
after what she had gone through in her son's workroom. In former years it
had happened pretty often that, when one of them had caused
dissatisfaction to the other, and there had been some quarrel between
them, they had gone to rest unreconciled, but the older they grew the
more rarely did this occur, and it was now a long time since any shadow
had fallen on the perfect serenity of their married life.

Three years ago, on the occasion of the marriage of their eldest son,
they had been standing together, looking up at the starry sky, when
Petrus had come close up to her, and had said, "How calmly and peacefully
the wanderers up there follow their roads without jostling or touching
one another! As I walked home alone from the quarries by their friendly
light, I thought of many things. Perhaps there was once a time when the
stars rushed wildly about in confusion, crossing each other's path, while
many a star flew in pieces at the impact. Then the Lord created man, and
love came into the world and filled the heavens and the earth, and he
commanded the stars to be our light by night; then each began to respect
the path of the other, and the stars more rarely came into collision till
even the smallest and swiftest kept to its own path and its own period,
and the shining host abov