to whom in his despondency her heart clung with a remorseful
tenderness. She now almost wished that they had lived on bread and
water, and so had provided against this evil day of long separation
and dreary uncertainty. Now that she could no longer rest in her
old belief that there would be "some way" of tiding over every
financial crisis, she became a prey to forebodings equally vague
that there might be no way. That HER HUSBAND could spend day after
day seeking employment, offering, too, to take positions far inferior
to the one he had lost, was a truth that at first bewildered and
then disheartened her beyond measure. She felt that they must,
indeed, have fallen on evil times when his services went a-begging.

To Mildred the present was dark, and the future most unpromising;
but deep in her heart nestled the sustaining thought that she was
not unloved, not forgotten. The will of others, not his own, kept
her lover from her side. His weaknesses were of a nature that
awakened her pity rather than contempt. If he had been a Hercules
physically and a Bacon intellectually, but conceited, domineering,
untruthful, and of the male flirt genus--from such weaknesses she
would have shrunk with intense repugnance. Her friends thought
her peculiarly gentle in disposition. They did not know--and she
herself might rarely recognize the truth--that she was also very
strong; her strength on its human side consisted in a simple,
unswerving fidelity to her womanly nature and sense of right; on
the Divine side, God's word was to her a verity. She daily said "Our
Father" as a little child. Has the world yet discovered a purer or
loftier philosophy?