f his children. She had never been
idle. She had never been fond of pleasure. She had neglected no
acknowledged duty. He did not doubt that she was now on her way to
heaven. He took his hands from his head, and clasping them together,
said a little prayer. It may be doubted whether he quite knew for
what he was praying. The idea of praying for her soul, now that she
was dead, would have scandalised him. He certainly was not praying
for his own soul. I think he was praying that God might save him from
being glad that his wife was dead.

But she was dead;--and, as it were, in a moment! He had not stirred
out of that room since she had been there with him. Then there had
been angry words between them,--perhaps more determined enmity on his
part than ever had before existed; and they had parted for the last
time with bitter animosity. But he told himself that he had certainly
been right in what he had done then. He thought he had been right
then. And so his mind went back to the Crawley and Thumble question,
and he tried to alleviate the misery which that last interview with
his wife now created by assuring himself that he at least had been
justified in what he had done.

But yet his thoughts were very tender to her. Nothing reopens the
springs of love so fully as absence, and no absence so thoroughly as
that which must needs be endless. We want that which we have not; and
especially that which we can never have. She had told him in the very
last moments of her presence with him that he was wishing that she
were dead, and he had made her no reply. At the moment he had felt,
with savage anger, that such was his wish. Her words had now come to
pass, and he was a widower,--and he assured himself that he would
give all that he possessed in the world to bring her back again.

Yes, he was a widower, and he might do as he pleased. The tyrant
was gone, and he was free. The tyrant was gone, and the tyranny had
doubtless been very oppressive. Who had suffered as he had done? But
in thus being left without his tyrant he was wretchedly desolate.
Might it not be that the tyranny had been good for him?--that the
Lord had known best what wife was fit for him? Then he thought of a
story which he had read,--and had well marked as he was reading,--of
some man who had been terribly afflicted by his wife, whose wife had
starved him and beaten him and reviled him; and yet this man had been
able to thank God for having mortified him in the fl