He sat down by her and touched her hand, but said only one word: "Theodora!" She lifted her sad, lovely eyes to his. "Theodora!" he said again, and she laid her hand in his, and whispered "Robert!" Then his kiss brought back the color to her cheeks and the light to her eyes, and when he vowed that he loved her and David more dearly than any other mortals, she believed him; and found sweet words to excuse all his faults, and to tell him he was "loved with all her heart." Was she a foolish woman to forgive so easily, and so much? It was because she loved so much that she could forgive so much, and of such loving, foolish hearts is the Kingdom of Heaven. For no love is so swift and welcome as returning love. Even the angels desire to witness the reunion of hearts that have been kept apart by fault, or fate, and as for Theodora, she had the courage to be happy in this promise of better days, knowing that she came not to this house by accident, but that it was the very place God had chosen for her. Besides which, the heart has its arguments as well as the head, and at this hour she was judging Robert by her love, and not by her understanding. CHAPTER IX THE LAST STRAW For a few days Theodora clung tenaciously to her hope, but it had only told her a flattering tale. Robert had gradually fallen below the plane--moral and intellectual--on which his wife lived; and it was only by a painful endeavor, that he returned to the Robert of six years previously. His wife's conversation, though bright and clever, was not as pleasant to him as his mother's biting gossip about the house and the callers; and he could assume a slippered, careless toilet in her presence, that made him uncomfortable when at the side of the always prettily gowned Theodora. For when such a circumstance happened, he involuntarily felt compelled to apologize, and he did not think apologies belonged to his position as master of the house. He had lost his taste for music, unless there was some stranger present whom he desired to make envious or astonished; in fact he had descended to that commonplace stage of love, which values a wife or a mistress only according to the value set upon her by outsiders--by their envy and jealousy of himself, as the clever winner of such an extraordinary artist, or beauty. Consequently, in a time of economy, forbidding the entertainment of strangers, Theodora's hours of supremacy were likely to be few and far between.