Hosmer was relieved to find the little parlor into which he was
ushered, with its adjoining dining-room, much changed. The carpets
which he and Fanny had gone out together to buy during the early days
of their housekeeping, were replaced by rugs that lay upon the bare,
well polished floors. The wall paper was different; so were the
hangings. The furniture had been newly re-covered. Only the small
household gods were as of old: things--trifles--that had never much
occupied or impressed him, and that now, amid their altered
surroundings stirred no sentiment in him of either pleased or sad
remembrance.

It had not been his wish to take his wife unawares, and he had
previously written her of his intended coming, yet without giving her
a clue for the reason of it.

There was an element of the bull-dog in Hosmer. Having made up his
mind, he indulged in no regrets, in no nursing of if's and and's, but
stood like a brave soldier to his post, not a post of danger,
true--but one well supplied with discomfiting possibilities.

And what had Homeyer said of it? He had railed of course as usual, at
the submission of a human destiny to the exacting and ignorant rule of
what he termed moral conventionalities. He had startled and angered
Hosmer with his denunciation of Therese's sophistical guidance.
Rather--he proposed--let Hosmer and Therese marry, and if Fanny were
to be redeemed--though he pooh-poohed the notion as untenable with
certain views of what he called the rights to existence: the existence
of wrongs--sorrows--diseases--death--let them all go to make up the
conglomerate whole--and let the individual man hold on to his
personality. But if she must be redeemed--granting this point to their
littleness, let the redemption come by different ways than those of
sacrifice: let it be an outcome from the capability of their united
happiness.

Hosmer did not listen to his friend Homeyer. Love was his god now, and
Therese was Love's prophet.

So he was sitting in this little parlor waiting for Fanny to come.

She came after an interval that had been given over to the indulgence
of a little feminine nervousness. Through the open doors Hosmer could
hear her coming down the back stairs; could hear that she halted
mid-way. Then she passed through the dining-room, and he arose and
went to meet her, holding out his hand, which she was not at once
ready to accept, being flustered and unprepared for his manner in
whichever way it might