I will have no hard angles, no pallor, no uncertain memory of pain in her life: it shall be perpetual summer." He loosened her hair, and it rolled down about the bright, tearful face, shining in the red fire-light like a mist of tawny gold.
"I need warmth and freshness and light: my wife shall bring them to me.
She shall be no strong-willed reformer, standing alone: a sovereign lady with kind words for the world, who gives her hand only to that man whom she trusts, and keeps her heart and its secrets for me alone." She paid no heed to him other than by a deepening colour; the clock, however, grew tired of the long soliloquy, and broke in with an asthmatic warning as to the time of night.
"There is midnight," she said.

"You shall go, now, Stephen Holmes,--quick! before your sovereign lady fades, like Cinderella, into grayness and frozen eyes!" When he was gone, she knelt down by her window, remembering that night long ago,--free to sob and weep out her joy,--very sure that her Master had not forgotten to hear even a woman's prayer, and to give her her true work,--very sure,--never to doubt again.

There was a dark, sturdy figure pacing up and down the road, that she did not see.

It was there when the night was over, and morning began to dawn.

Christmas morning! he remembered,--it was something to him now! Never again a homeless, solitary man! You would think the man weak, if I were to tell yon how this word "home" had taken possession of him,--how he had planned out work through the long night: success to come, but with his wife nearest his heart, and the homely farm-house, and the old school-master in the centre of the picture.