Holmes's pale lip worked: what was this coming to him?
His breast heaved, a dry heat panted in his veins, his deep eyes flashed fire.
"If my little friend comes to me," he said, in a smothered voice, "there is but one place for her,--her soul with my soul, her heart on my heart."-- He opened his arms.--"She must rest her head here.

My little friend must be--my wife." She looked into the strong, haggard face,--a smile crept out on her own, arch and debonair like that of old time.
"I am tired, Stephen," she whispered, and softly laid her head down on his breast.
The red fire-light flashed into a glory of crimson through the room, about the two figures standing motionless there,--shimmered down into awe-struck shadow: who heeded it?
The old clock ticked away furiously, as if rejoicing that weary days were over for the pet and darling of the house: nothing else broke the silence.

Without, the deep night paused, gray, impenetrable.

Did it hope that far angel-voices would break its breathless hush, as once on the fields of Judea, to usher in Christmas morn?
A hush, in air, and earth, and sky, of waiting hope, of a promised joy.

Down there in the farm-window two human hearts had given the joy a name; the hope throbbed into being; the hearts touching each other beat in a slow, full chord of love as pure in God's eyes as the song the angels sang, and as sure a promise of the Christ that is to come.