"In his hours of business, yes; but in his hours of relaxation, his love ought to rest and refresh him." There was a movement in the next room, and Theodora went there with light, swift steps. Robert was walking moodily up and down, and through the open door he saw her kneeling by a large chair, and David's arms were round her neck, and she was telling him he must now go to bed. "Were you tired, that you fell asleep here?" she asked, and he answered: "I was waiting for you, mother, to hear my prayer, and kiss me good-night; and the sleep came to me." Then she sat down, and David knelt at her knees, and said the Lord's prayer, adding to it a petition for blessing on his father, his grandmother Campbell, his aunts Isabel and Christina, his grandfather and grandmother Newton, and his dear mother, with a final petition that God would love David and make him a good boy. It was a scene so sweet and natural that Robert stood still in respect to the simple rite, vaguely wondering in what forgotten life he had spoken words like them. Then Theodora called Ducie, and gave the child into her care, but as he was leaving the room he saw his father, and running to him, he said: "Father, kiss David too." Robert's heart stirred to the eager request, and he lifted the little lad in his arms, and actually did kiss him. In that moment the pretty face with its glances so free, so bright, so seeking, without guile or misgiving, impressed itself on Robert's memory forever. Even after the child had gone away, he felt as if he still held him, and the consciousness of the soft, rosy cheek against his own was so vivid that he put his hand up and stroked his cheek until the sensation left him. He was really in a great strait of feeling, and, if he could not do right of himself, was in a strait, out of which there was no other decent way. He looked longingly at Theodora, who had resumed her work, and her pale, passionless face touched him by its complete contrast to the face he had just left--the hard, gossipy, pitiless, scornful face of his mother. He could not forget his son's prayer. He knew it well, he himself was never one to prompt, nor to correct, so it was certain that Theodora had taught the boy to pray for those who constantly spoke evil of her. He resolved to tell his mother of this incident, and again he tried to read the feeling on his wife's face. It was not depression, it was not sorrow, it was far from anger, there was nothing of indifference in it, and nothing restless or uncertain. He did not understand it. How could such a man as Robert understand a life of pure piety and intelligence, working its way upward through love and pain.