And he knew at last that another change had come with her years; that she no longer confided in him unreservedly, as the little child had.

He knew there were things now she could not give him.

She communed with herself, and her silences had come between them.
She looked past him at unseen forms, and listened as if for echoes that she alone could hear, waiting and wanting, knowing not her wants--yet driven to aloofness by them from the little bent man of sorrows, whose whole life she had now become.
His hope lasted hardly until the year ended.

Before the time was over, there had crept into his mind a conviction that the Son of Man would not come; that the Lord's favour had been withdrawn from Israel.

He knew the cause,--the shedding of innocent blood.