which he could not spare--nothing but his love.
Impossible to paint her pathetic gratitude for this affection; the
spiritual--it was not passionate--fondness which she bore him; the
softness of her eyes as she gazed for minutes together into his; the
sudden, tremulous outreachings of her hands toward him, as she just
touches him with her finger and draws back, then leans forward and lies in
his arms, uttering a little cry of happiness. Here was a heart that must
long have hungered for affection--a heart unspeakably thankful and joyous
at obtaining it.

"I have been smiling all day," she sometimes said to him. "People have
asked me why I looked so gay, and what I had heard that was funny. It is
just because I am entirely happy, and because the feeling is still a
surprise. Shall I ever get over it? Am I silly? No!"

Her gladness of heart seemed to make her angelic. She rejoiced in every
joy around her, and grieved for every sorrow. She visited the poor of her
husband's patients, watched with them when there was need, made little
collections for their relief, chatted away their forebodings, half cured
them with her smile. There was something catching, comforting, uplifting
in the spectacle of that overbrimming content.

The well were as susceptible to its influence as the sick. Once, half a
dozen men and twice as many boys were seen engaged in recovering her veil
out of a pond into which the wind had blown it; and when it was handed to
her by a shy youth on the end of a twenty-foot pole, all felt repaid for
their labors by the childlike burst of laughter with which she received
it. Now and then, however, shadows fell across this sunshine. In those
dark moments she frequently reverted to the unhappy couple of whom she had
told Leighton when he first spoke to her of marriage. She was possessed to
describe the man--his dull, filmy, unsympathetic black eyes, his
methodical life and hard rationality, his want of sentiment and
tenderness.

"Why do you talk of that person so much?" Leighton implored. "You seem to
be charging me with his cruelty. I am not like him."

The tears filled her eyes as she started toward him, saying, "No, you are
_not_ like him. Even if you should become like him, I couldn't reproach
you. I should merely die."

"But you know him so well?" he added, inquiringly. "You seem to fear him.
Has he any power over you?"

For a moment she was so sombre that he half feared lest her mind was
unstrung on this