t my great
good fortune in securing such a treasure for my own. I am rich, rich in
love. My children are all very near and dear to me, and I know and feel
that I am to them, but you--ah, I think you are dearer than all five of
them put together!"

"Ah," she said with a joyous smile, "those are sweet, sweet words to me!
And yet they make me feel almost as if I had robbed them--your children.
They all love you so dearly, as you have said, and set so high a value
upon your love to them."

"And it is very great: none the less because my love for you is still
greater. You, my dear wife, are my second self--'bone of my bone and
flesh of my flesh.' It is right that our mutual love should exceed all
other earthly loves."

"Yes; and yet I fear it would make Lu--perhaps Gracie also--unhappy to
know that you have greater love for anyone else than for them."

"I think they do know it, and also that it is right that it should be
so. And I presume they will both some day love someone else better than
their father. I cannot blame them if they do."

"Perhaps the love differs more in kind than degree," Violet said
presently.

"Yes; there is something in that," he returned; "yet it is not
altogether that which satisfies me. We are all bidden to love one
another. 'Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the
Church, and gave himself for it.... So ought men to love their wives as
their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself.... Let every
one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself.'"

He paused and Violet finished the quotation.

"'And the wife see that she reverence her husband.' Ah, it is easy for
me to do that with such a husband as mine," she added. "Also, I remember
that in Paul's epistle to Titus there is a passage, where the aged women
are bidden to teach the younger ones to be sober, to love their
husbands, to love their children. And in the next verse to be obedient
to their husbands. I think I have kept that command as far as I could
without getting any orders from mine," she concluded, smiling up into
his eyes.

"Yes, indeed, dearest," he said, returning the smile and drawing her
closer to his side with a fond gesture, "where one's slightest wish is
promptly and eagerly complied with a command would be altogether
superfluous. And though I consider it wise and right--yes, an
unquestionable duty to exact prompt, cheerful obedience from my
children, I do not think I should ask it of