The phrase Please God is as a rule expressive of the speaker's desire, but not of his expectation. So it was with Mrs. Hodge, but Dale could not bring himself to take so gloomy a view. A man's own passion assumes a most imposing appearance of permanence, but he finds it easy to look with incredulity on a like assumption in the feelings of others. He had keen sympathy for Nellie in the moment or the period of pain which seemed to lie before her, but experience told him that all probabilities were in favor of her escaping from it at no distant time. Love like his for Janet--and, till this unhappy day, he would have added, Janet's for him--was exceptional; change, recovery, oblivion--these were the rule, the happy rule whose operation smoothed love's rough ways. Nevertheless, be this wide philosophical view as just as it might, the present position came nigh to being intolerable, and it was hard to blame him if he looked forward to Nellie's departure with relief. Her presence accused him of cruelty, for it seems cruel to refuse what would give happiness, and it increased every day it continued the misunderstanding which already existed as to their future relations. Even now, in spite of Janet's protest, Dale was convinced he had detected an undercurrent of jealousy, flowing in to re-enforce the stream of that higher, but stranger and wilder, feeling which had made her drive him away. If she heard that Nellie remained at his house, and what conclusion was universally drawn from the fact, he was afraid that, when restored health carried away the morbid idea which was now most prominent, the jealousy might remain, and, if it did, Janet's proud nature was ground on which it would bear fruit bitter for him to taste.