to have been obliged to watch the
effect. It would be like having to look on at a vivisection. There are
things I don't want to see or to know. All that is really imperative is
that, whatever the outcome, they should consider us their friends."

The letter was not finished till she was alone that night. She wrote
carefully at first, choosing just the right words. "Thor is sleeping at
the other house, and may continue to do so for some time. He seems to
want to be there--as you can understand. Not only does he make it more
bearable for Uncle Sim and Cousin Amy, but he gets a kind of assuagement
to his grief in being near Claude. You needn't be surprised, therefore,
if he remains a little longer--perhaps longer than you might expect."

Up to this point she had been cautious, but for a minute something less
controlled escaped her. "Oh, mother darling, I want to be a good wife to
Thor, as you've been a good wife to papa. He needs me, and yet in his
inmost heart he's bearing this great trial alone. Don't misunderstand
me. I haven't broken down. Perhaps if I could have broken down a little
it would have brought me nearer to him. But I'm not near to him. There's
the truth. I'm infinitely far away from him. In a sense I'm infinitely
below him; for though I've been right in certain matters in which he has
been wrong, I feel strangely his inferior. He has things on his
conscience for which I know he finds it hard to see the way of
repentance--and I have nothing on mine--nothing, that is, but a vague
discomfort and a sense of not being wholly right--and yet I feel that
he's--how shall I put it?--that he's the nearer to God of us two. He
needs me, and I ought to help him; but it's like helping some one who's
on a tower while I stay on the ground. Oh, mother darling, why can't I
be to him what you've been to papa? What is it that men get from women
which _saves_ them? Thor needs saving just as much as other men, though
you mightn't suppose so. I know you think him perfect, and I used to
think the same; but he's not. He has faults--grave ones. I even know
that he's weak where I'm strong, and that the thing he needs is the
thing I can supply--only I don't supply it. Mother dear, you've given it
to papa or he wouldn't be recovering as he is. Why can't I give it, too?
He's there in that house, and I'm here in this. His heart is aching for
grief, and mine because I don't know how to comfort him--and all because
the glimmer of light that