n, myself." He gave Marise an apologetic glance. "I guess I haven't
any stones to throw at your foolishness."

Agnes ran to get him another cup of cocoa and some more bread and
butter. Marise leaned back on the sofa and watched him eat.

* * * * *

She was aware of a physical release from tension that was like a new
birth. She looked at her husband as she had not looked at him for years.
And yet she knew every line and hollow of that rugged face. What she
seemed not to have seen before, was what had grown up little by little,
the expression of his face, the expression which gave his presence its
significance, the expression which he had not inherited like his
features, but which his life had wrought out there.

Before her very eyes there seemed still present the strange, alien look
of the dead face upstairs, from which the expression had gone, and with
it everything. That vision hung, a cold and solemn warning in her mind,
and through it she looked at the living face before her and saw it as
she had never done before.

In the clean, new, sweet lucidity of her just-returned consciousness she
saw what she was not to forget, something like a steady, visible light,
which was Neale's life. That was Neale himself. And as she looked at him
silently, she thought it no wonder that she had been literally almost
frightened to death by the mere possibility that it had not existed. She
had been right in thinking that there was something there which would
outlast the mere stars.

He looked up, found her eyes on him, and smiled at her. She found the
gentleness of his eyes so touching that she felt the tears mounting to
her own. . . . But she winked them back. There had been enough foolishness
from her, for one day.

Neale leaned back in his chair now, looked around for his; cap, took it
up, and looked back at her, quietly, still smiling a little. Marise
thought, "Neale is as _natural_ in his life as a very great actor is in
his art. Whatever he does, even to the most trifling gesture, is done
with so great a simplicity that it makes people like me feel fussy and
paltry."

There was a moment's silence, Neale frankly very tired, looking rather
haggard and grim, giving himself a moment's respite in his chair before
standing up to go; Marise passive, drawing long quiet breaths, her hands
folded on her knees; Agnes, her back to the other two, hanging about the
sideboard, opening and shutting the draw