of the middle earth, it was
long before she had quite ceased to regard him as a power of the nether
world, partly human, and at once something less and something more. Yet
even already she was beginning to feel at home with them! True, the
world in which they really lived was above her spiritual vision, as
beyond her intellectual comprehension, yet not the less was the air
around them the essential air of homeness; for the truths in which their
spirits lived and breathed, were the same which lie at the root of every
feeling of home-safety in the world, which make the bliss of the child
in his mother's bed, the bliss of young beasts in their nests, of birds
under their mother's wing. The love which inclosed her was far too great
for her--as the heaven of the mother's face is beyond the understanding
of the new-born child over whom she bends; but that mother's face is
nevertheless the child's joy and peace. She did not yet recognize it as
love, saw only the ministration; but it was what she sorely needed: she
said the sort of thing suited her, and at once began to fall in with it.
What it cost her entertainers, with organization as delicate as uncouth,
in the mere matter of bodily labor, she had not an idea--imagined indeed
that she gave them no trouble at all, because, having overheard the
conversation between them upon her arrival, she did herself a part of
the work required for her comfort in her own room. She never saw the
poor quarters to which Ruth for her sake had banished herself--never
perceived the fact that there was nothing good enough wherewith to repay
them except worshipful gratitude, love, admiration, and
submission--feelings she could not even have imagined possible in regard
to such inferiors.

And now Dorothy had not a little to say to Juliet about her husband. In
telling what had taken place, however, she had to hear many more
questions than she was able to answer.

"Does he really believe me dead, Dorothy?" was one of them.

"I do not believe there is one person in Glaston who knows what he
thinks," answered Dorothy. "I have not heard of his once opening his
mouth on the subject. He is just as silent now as he used to be ready to
talk."

"My poor Paul!" murmured Juliet, and hid her face and wept.

Indeed not a soul in Glaston or elsewhere knew a single thought he had.
Certain mysterious advertisements in the county paper were imagined by
some to be his and to refer to his wife. Some, as the body