or than was requisite in order to conceal their difference from the
servants and children. Up to this time, an understanding had always
subsisted between them that had never taken form in words, and yet that
had scarcely in a single case been infringed, that neither should ever
praise one of their children for anything that the other thought
blameworthy, and vice versa.

But in this night, her husband had followed up her severest condemnation
by passionately embracing the wrong-doer. Never had she been so stern in
any circumstances, while on the other hand her husband, so long as she
could remember, had never been so softhearted and tender to his son, and
yet she had controlled herself so far, as not to contradict Petrus in
Polykarp's presence, and to leave the work-room in silence with her
husband.

"When we are once alone together in the bedroom," thought she, "I will
represent to him his error as I ought, and he will have to answer for
himself."

But she did not carry out this purpose, for she felt that something must
be passing in her husband's mind that she did not understand; otherwise
how could his grave eyes shine so mildly and kindly, and his stern lips
smile so affectionately after all that had occurred when he, lamp in
hand, had mounted the narrow stair.

He had often told her that she could read his soul like an open book, but
she did not conceal from herself that there were certain sides of that
complex structure whose meaning she was incapable of comprehending.
And strange to say, she ever and again came upon these incomprehensible
phases of his soul, when the images of the gods, and the idolatrous