for help, and hope to awaken her mother-in-law. The echoes rang through the
house, and as they died away, appalled, she listened to the silence.

At length it grew clear that Mrs. Ede could not be awakened, and Kate saw
that she would have to trust to herself alone, and after two or three
failures she applied herself to winning him back to consciousness. It was
necessary to do so before attempting to move him again, and, sprinkling his
face with water, she persuaded him to open his eyes, and after one little
stare he slipped back into the nothingness he had come out of; and this was
repeated several times, Kate redoubling her efforts until at last she
succeeded in placing him in a chair. He sat there, still striving and
struggling with his breath, unable to move, and soaked with sweat, but
getting better every minute. The worst of the attack was now over; she
buttoned his nightshirt across his panting chest and covered his shoulders
with his red shawl once more, and with a sentiment of real tenderness she
took his hand in hers. She looked at him, feeling her heart grow larger.

He was her husband; he had suffered terribly, and was now getting better;
and she was his wife, whose duty it was to attend him. She only wished he
would allow her to love him a little better; but against her will facts
pierced through this luminous mist of sentiment, and she could not help
remembering how petulant he was with her, how utterly all her wishes were
disregarded. 'What a pity he's not a little different!' she thought; but
when she looked at him and saw how he suffered, all other thoughts were
once more drowned and swept away. She forgot how he often rendered her life
miserable, wellnigh unbearable, by small vices, faults that defy
definition, unending selfishness and unceasing irritability. But now all
dissatisfaction and bitternesses were again merged into a sentiment that
was akin to love; and in this time of physical degradation he possessed her
perhaps more truly, more perfectly, than even in his best moments of