one's will, and yet succeed
in getting past without touching it," said the curate, with a flavor of
asperity. His wife gently pinched his arm, and he was ashamed.

When they reached home, Juliet went straight to bed--or at least to her
room for the night.

"I say, Wingfold," remarked the rector, as they sat alone after supper,
"that sermon of yours was above your congregation."

"I am afraid you are right, sir. I am sorry. But if you had seen their
faces as I did, perhaps you would have modified the conclusion."

"I am very glad I heard it, though," said the rector.

They had more talk, and when Wingfold went up stairs, he found Helen
asleep. Annoyed with himself for having spoken harshly to Mrs. Faber,
and more than usually harassed by a sense of failure in his sermon, he
threw himself into a chair, and sat brooding and praying till the light
began to appear. Out of the reeds shaken all night in the wind, rose
with the morning this bird:--

THE SMOKE.

Lord, I have laid my heart upon Thy altar,
But can not get the wood to burn;
It hardly flares ere it begins to falter,
And to the dark return.

Old sap, or night-fallen dew, has damped the fuel;
In vain my breath would flame provoke;
Yet see--at every poor attempt's renewal
To Thee ascends the smoke.

'Tis all I have--smoke, failure, foiled endeavor,
Coldness, and doubt, and palsied lack;
Such as I have I send Thee;--perfect Giver,
Send Thou Thy lightning back.

In the morning, as soon as breakfast was over, Helen's ponies were
brought to the door, she and Juliet got into the carriage, Wingfold
jumped up behind, and they returned to Glaston. Little was said on the
way, and Juliet seemed strangely depressed. They left her at her own
door.

"What did that look mean?" said Wingfold to his wife, the moment they
were round the corner of Mr. Drew's shop.

"You saw it then?" returned Helen. "I did not think you had been so
quick."

"I saw what I could not help taking for relief," said the curate, "when
the maid told her that her husband was not at home."

They said no more till they reached the rectory, where Helen followed
her husband to his study.

"He can't have turned tyrant already!" she said, resuming the subject of
Juliet's look. "But she's afraid of him."

"It did look like it," rejoined her husband. "Oh, Helen, what a hideous
thing fear of her husband must be for a woman, who has to spend not her
days only