resence, and to leave the work-room in silence with her
husband.

"When we are once alone together in the bedroom," thought she, "I will
represent to him his error as I ought, and he will have to answer for
himself."

But she did not carry out this purpose, for she felt that something must
be passing in her husband's mind that she did not understand; otherwise
how could his grave eyes shine so mildly and kindly, and his stern lips
smile so affectionately after all that had occurred when he, lamp in
hand, had mounted the narrow stair.

He had often told her that she could read his soul like an open book,
but she did not conceal from herself that there were certain sides of
that complex structure whose meaning she was incapable of comprehending.
And strange to say, she ever and again came upon these incomprehensible
phases of his soul, when the images of the gods, and the idolatrous
temples of the heathen, or when their sons' enterprises and work were
the matters in hand. And yet Petrus was the son of a pious Christian;
but his grandfather had been a Greek heathen, 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, th