gh when the door
closed. For her the gates of love were wide open, but she had no
conception that for her mother they were not shut until she should go
to heaven to join her father.

Chapter XX

The next evening Maria, as usual, went to church with her two aunts.
Henry Stillman remained at home reading the Sunday paper. He took a
certain delight in so doing, although he knew, in the depths of his
soul, that his delight was absurd. He knew perfectly well that it did
not make a feather's weight of difference in the universal scheme of
things that he, Henry Stillman, should remain at home and read the
columns of scandal and politics in that paper, instead of going to
church, and yet he liked to think that his small individuality and
its revolt because of its injuries at the hands of fate had its
weight, and was at least a small sting of revenge.

He watched his wife adjust her bonnet before the looking-glass in the
sitting-room, and arrange carefully the bow beneath her withered
chin, and a great pity for her, because she was no longer as she had
been, but was so heavily marked by time, and a great jealousy that
she should not lose the greatest of all things, which he himself had
lost, came over him. As she--a little, prim, mild woman, in her
old-fashioned winter cape and her bonnet, with its stiff tuft of
velvet pansies--passed him, he caught her thin, black-gloved hand and
drew her close to him.

"I'm glad you are going to church, Eunice," he said.

Eunice colored, and regarded him with a kind of abashed wonder.

"Why don't you come, too, Henry?" she said, timidly.

"No, I've quit," replied Henry. "I've quit begging where I don't get
any alms; but as for you, if you get anything that satisfies your
soul, for God's sake hold on to it, Eunice, and don't let it go."
Then he pulled her bonneted head down and kissed her thin lips, with
a kind of tenderness which was surprising. "You've been a good wife,
Eunice," he said.

Eunice laid her hand on his shoulder and looked at him a second. She
was almost frightened. Outward evidences of affection had not been
frequent between them of late years, or indeed ever. They were
New-Englanders to the marrow of their bones. Anything like an
outburst of feeling or sentiment, unless in case of death or
disaster, seemed abnormal. Henry realized his wife's feeling, and he
smiled up at her.

"We are getting to be old folks," he said, "and we've had more bitter
than sweet in