ring, and hob-nobbed with death
and corruption. But life is at the will of the Maker, and misery can not
kill it. By degrees a little composure returned, and the old keen look
began to revive. But there were wrinkles on the forehead that had
hitherto been smooth as ivory; furrows, the dry water-courses of sorrow,
appeared on his cheeks, and a few silvery threads glinted in his hair.
His step was heavy, and his voice had lost its ring--the cheer was out
of it. He no more obtruded his opinions, for, as I have said, he shrunk
from all interchange, but he held to them as firmly as ever. He was not
to be driven from the truth by suffering! But there was a certain
strange movement in his spirit of which he took no note--a feeling of
resentment, as if against a God that yet did not exist, for making upon
him the experiment whether he might not, by oppression, be driven to
believe in Him.

When Dorothy knew of his return, and his ways began to show that he
intended living just as before his marriage, the time seemed come for
telling Juliet of the accident and his recovery from the effects of it.
She went into violent hysterics, and the moment she could speak, blamed
Dorothy bitterly for not having told her before.

"It is all your lying religion!" she said.

"Your behavior, Juliet," answered Dorothy, putting on the matron, and
speaking with authority, "shows plainly how right I was. You were not to
be trusted, and I knew it. Had I told you, you would have rushed to him,
and been anything but welcome. He would not even have known you; and you
would have been two on the doctor's hands. You would have made
everything public, and when your husband came to himself, would probably
have been the death of him after all."

"He may have begun to think more kindly of me by that time," said
Juliet, humbled a little.

"We must not act on _may-haves_," answered Dorothy.

"You say he looks wretched now," suggested Juliet.

"And well he may, after concussion of the brain, not to mention what
preceded it," said Dorothy.

She had come to see that Juliet required very plain speaking. She had so
long practiced the art of deceiving herself that she was skillful at it.
Indeed, but for the fault she had committed, she would all her life long
have been given to petting and pitying, justifying and approving of
herself. One can not help sometimes feeling that the only chance for
certain persons is to commit some fault sufficient to shame them o