So she had quietly stood aside, taken up her own solitary burden, and left him with his clear self-reliant life,--with his Self, dearer to him than she had ever been.

Why should it not be dearer?
She thought,--remembering the man as he was, a master among men: fit to be a master.

She,--what was she compared to him?
He was back again; she must see him.

So she stood there with this persistent dread running through her brain.
Suddenly, in the lane by the house, she heard a voice talking to Joel,--the huckster-girl.

What a weak, cheery sound it was in the cold and fog! It touched her curiously: broke through her morbid thought as anything true and healthy should have done.