ed bottomless to her. His sorrow seemed to her to
borrow all voices, to make itself masks of everything it met. She
did not understand that her husband talked himself well, that
pleasure in his power of fancy played and smiled in him.

She had dragged her daughter with her. The daughter had not wished
to go. She was serious, modest, and conscientious. Nothing of youth
played in her veins. She was born old.

She had grown up in shame of her father. She walked upright,
austere, as if saying: "Look, the daughter of a man who is despised!
Look if my dress is soiled! Is there anything to blame in my
conduct?" Her mother was proud of her. Yet sometimes she sighed.
"Alas! if my daughter's hands were less white, perhaps her caresses
would be warmer!"

The girl sat scornfully smiling. She despised theatricals. When her
father rose up to speak, she wished to go. Her mother's hand seized
hers, fast as a vice. The girl sat still. The torrent of words
began to roar over her. But that which spoke to her was not so much
the words as her mother's hand.

That hand writhed, convulsions passed through it. It lay in hers
limp, as if dead; it caught wildly about, hot with fever. Her
mother's face betrayed nothing; only her hand suffered and
struggled.

The old speaker described the martyrdom of silence. The friend of
Jesus lay ill. His sisters sent a message to him; but his time had
not come. For the sake of God's kingdom Lazarus must die.

He now let all doubting, all slander be heaped upon Christ. He
described his suffering. His own compassion tortured him. He passed
through the agony of death, he as well as Lazarus. Still he had to
keep silence.

Only one word had he needed to say to win back the respect of his
friends. He was silent. He had to hear the lamentations of the
sisters. He told them the truth in words which they did not
understand. Enemies mocked at him.

And so on always more and more affecting.

Anna Erikson's hand still lay in that of her daughter. It confessed
and acknowledged: "The man there bears the martyr's crown of
silence. He is wrongly accused. With a word he could set himself
free."

The girl followed her mother home. They went in silence. The girl's
face was like stone. She was pondering, searching for everything
which memory could tell her. Her mother looked anxiously at her.
What did she know?

The next day Anna Erikson had her coffee party. The talk turned on
the day's market, on the price of