The tear which she did not hide from him was his gage of love.

The brooding eye, the infrequent smile, the start, the reverie were for him only, and for no other.

They were the gift to him of her secret life, her inmost heart.
It was an odd love-making, and bizarre.

To Grio, even to men more delicate and more finely wrought, it might have seemed no love-making at all.

But the wood-smoke that perfumed the air, sweetened it, the firelight wrapped it about, the pots and pans and simple things of life, amid which it passed, hallowed it.