She turned the light upon his face. Never had he looked so pale and
wan, and she realized that he might be near his end. In an agony of
self-reproach and yearning tenderness she kneeled at his bedside and
prayed as she never had prayed before. Could he go home? Could he be
received, feeling toward his Father as he did? He had talked of
forgiving, when he stood so sorely in need of Christ's forgiveness;
and she had been forgetting that need, when every moment might involve
her husband's salvation. Out of his sleep he had called her to his
help. Perhaps God had used his unconscious lips to summon her. With
a faith naturally strong, but greatly increased by the vision of the
night, she went, as it were, directly into the presence of her Lord,
and entreated in behalf of her husband.

As she thus knelt at the bedside, with her face buried in the covering,
she felt a hand placed softly on her head, and again her husband's
voice called, "Ethel!"

She looked up and saw that he was awake now, his eyes fixed on her
with an expression of softness and tenderness that she had not seen
for many a long day. The old restless, anxious light had gone.

"What were you doing, Ethel?" he asked. "Praying that you might see
that God loved you--that you might be reconciled to Him."

Two great tears gathered in the man's eyes. His lips quivered a moment,
then he said, brokenly, "Surely God must love me, or He would never
have given me--a wife--who would watch and pray for me--the long
winter night."