She stood on the threshold watching him. She was very young and she
was a little afraid of him. Her eyes, as she looked upon him, saw an
obstinate old man in a gay dressing gown. And the man in the gay
dressing gown felt old until he faced suddenly his wife's picture on
the stairs.

It had been weeks since he had seen it, and in those weeks much had
happened. Her smiling presence came to him freshly, as the spring
might come to one housed through a long winter, or the dawn after a
dark night.

"Edith!"

He leaned upon the balustrade. The nurse, coming out, warned him.
"Indeed, you'd better stay in your room."

"I'm all right. Please don't worry. You 'tend to your knitting, and
I'll take care of myself."

She insisted, however, on bringing out a chair and a rug. "Perhaps it
will be a change for you to sit in the hall," she conceded, and tucked
him in, and he found himself trembling a little from weakness, and glad
of the support which the chair gave him.

It seemed very pleasant to sit there with Edith smiling at him. For
the first time in many weeks his mind was at rest. Ever since Hilda
had come he had felt the pressure of an exciting presence. He felt
this morning free from it, and glad to be free.

What a wife Edith had been! Holding him always to his highest and
best, yet loving him even when he stumbled and fell. Bending above him
in her beautiful charity and understanding, raising him up, fostering
his self-respect in those moments of depression when he had despised
himself.

What other woman would have done it? What other woman would have kept
her love for him through it all? For she had loved him. It had never
been his money with her. She would have clung to him in sickness and
in poverty.

But Hilda loved his money. He knew it now as absolutely as if she had
said it. For the first time in weeks he saw clearly. Last night his
eyes had been opened.

He had been roused towards morning by those soft sounds in the second
room, which he had heard more than once in the passing weeks. In his
feverish moments, it had not seemed unlikely that his wife might be
there, coming back to haunt, with her gentle presence, the familiar
rooms. There was, indeed, her light step, the rustle of her silken
garments--.

Half-asleep he had listened, then had opened his eyes to find the
night-lamp burning, Hilda's book under it and Hilda gone!

The minutes passed as still his ears were strained.