"I am glad to get back to you and to our dear home," Rachel was saying to her husband at the same moment. "You must never send me away again. Indeed, dear Aaron, if you intend it I shall for once in my life be rebellious, and shall refuse to go." She spoke tenderly and playfully, and held his hand in hers, as in the olden days. "Nevertheless, my love, your short visit to the seaside has done you good." "Yes, dear, I am almost well; I feel much stronger." "There is the justification," said Aaron. "I am not happy away from you, but there are occasions when it is our duty to make sacrifices. This is the longest separation there has been between us in the twenty-six years of our married life." "How time has flown!" she mused. "Twenty-six years of happiness. It has always been the same, dear husband, whether we were poor or rich, I cannot recall a day in the past without its flower which money could not purchase." "You make my task easier, Rachel," said Aaron. "I have something to disclose to you." "And it is not good news, love," she said in a tone of much sweetness. "It is not good news, Rachel. By what means have you divined that?" "I see without eyes. In the early days of my blindness I used to tell you that I was acquiring new senses. It is true. Some accent in your voice, the touch of your hand, conveys the message to my mind, and I wait in patience, as I am waiting now. Aaron, my dear husband, I have known for some time past that you have a sorrow which one day you will ask me to share. How have I known it? I cannot tell, but it is clear to me. You have not had a joy in your life apart from me. It is my right, is it not, to share your sorrows?" "It is your right, Rachel, and you shall share them. I have not been without my errors; once in the past my footsteps strayed, but in the straying I inflicted suffering upon no human being." "Of that I am sure, my love. It is human to err, but it is not in your nature to inflict suffering or commit an injustice. I am not pressing you to confide in me before, in your judgment, the proper time arrives. Nothing can shake my faith and trust in you." He regarded her in silence a while. The turn the conversation had taken favored the disclosure of his secret respecting Ruth, but he feared to speak of that and of his ruin in the same hour. The latter was the more imperative, because it demanded immediate action, and he resolved to confine himself to it on this evening. "Your loving instinct, Rachel, has not misled you. I have a secret which I have concealed from you." "Fearing to give me pain, dear husband." "Yes; and fearing that it would disturb the faith you have in me. I place so high a value upon it that my life would be dark indeed were I to lose it." "That is impossible, dear. Banish the fear from your mind. Were the hands of all men raised against you I would stand before you as your shield, and they would not dare to strike. So long as you are by my side I am happy and content."