across the light and paused before the pile of cedar boughs, she
glanced at him with a smile, seeing how his path was barred. Then
she said to them:--

"Hurry, children! The night comes when we cannot work!"

It was an hour of such good-will on earth to men that no one could
seem a stranger to her. He instantly became a human brother, next
of kin to her--that was all; she was wholly under the influence of
the innocence and purity within and without.

As he made no reply and for a moment did not move, she glanced
quickly at him, regretting the smile. When she saw his face, he saw
the joy go down out of hers; and he felt, as he turned off, that
she went with him along the black street: alone, he seemed not
alone any more.

Though he had been with her many times since, no later impression
had effaced one line of that first picture. There she stood ever to
him, and would stand: on the step of the church, smiling in her
mourning, binding her wreath, the jets of the chandelier streaming
out on her snow-sprinkled shoulder, the children carolling among
the fragrant cedar boughs scattered at her feet; she there,
decorating the church, happy to be of pious service. Ah, to have
her there in the room with him now; to be able to turn his eyes to
hers in the vanishing firelight, near sleep awaiting them, side by
side.

There was the sound of a scratching on David's window shutters, as
though a stiff brush were being moved up and down across the slats.