The daily round, brightened only by a few unsatisfying, fleeting pleasures; the slow passage of unchanging years; the encounter with some young man, like other young men, whose patient and hopeful courting ends by whining affection; a marriage then, and afterwards a vista of days under another roof, but scarce different from those that went before.

So does one live, the voice had told her.

Naught very dreadful in the prospect, and, even were it so, what possible but submission; yet all level, dreary and chill as an autumn field.
It is not true! Alone there in the darkness Maria shakes her head, a smile upon her lips, and knows how far from true it is.

When she thinks of Paradis, his look, his bearing, of what they are and will be to one another, he and she, something within her bosom has strange power to burn with the touch of fire, and yet to make her shiver.

All the strong youth of her, the long-suffering of her sooth-fast heart find place in it; in the upspringing of hope and of longing, this vision of her approaching miracle of happiness.
Below the oven the red gleam quivers and fails.
"The bread must be ready!" she murmurs to herself.