John Gore was sitting alone before the kitchen fire when the parlor door opened very softly and a shadow fell athwart the clean red bricks. Barbara was standing there with some ruddy silken stuff held up over her bosom and falling in rich folds to her feet. He turned in his chair, smitten with the thought of how fair she looked with her swarthy beauty and that ruddy sheen of silk to heighten it. There was just a flash of woman’s vanity in her eyes that moment, a thing new in her since he had come. “Barbe!” She came to him, holding the stuff in her two hands, and they could hear Mrs. Winnie singing with purposeful vigor in the parlor. “John, how good of you! But you must let me—” “Let you do what, my soul?” And he rose and stood looking at her very dearly. “Pay you, John.” “What pride—and nonsense! But that silk is sweet, now, is it not?” She met his eyes, blushed, and looked down at her own figure. And then, suddenly, she let the silken stuff fall to the floor, put her two hands up over her face, and burst into tears. “How wicked of me—how utterly wicked!” “Why, Barbe, child?” “Don’t speak to me, John. To think that I should give thought to such things when all this is over you—over us both!” He went to her, putting an arm about her shoulders, touched her hands gently with his lips. “Weep not, dear heart, if it be wrong that you should have these pretty stuffs, it is I who am to blame for loving you.” She let her hands fall and looked up through a mist of tears into his face. “John, can we—can you ever forget the past? Can you forgive?” “What have I to forgive, dear heart?” “Ah yes; but—” He held her at arm’s-length, his two hands upon her shoulders, and looked into her eyes. “Barbara, it is not your heart that is hard now. God has given this love to us, and what God gives, who shall forbid?” She hung her head and sighed. “I am wondering, John.” “Well, my life?” “What will happen, what we must do—what the end may be.” He looked at her a moment in silence, and then spoke like a man whose strength is in his own heart. “Child, there is one good and certain thing with us—let us hold to it, you and I together. I will take shame from no man, and no lie from any living throat. If there should be dark days, let them come; I will not let you go from me—no, for here life is, nor can there be sin or shame in that which God has given.” She looked up at him quickly with a great brightness of the eyes. “John, I cannot, I could not, stand all alone now.” “Why, my desire, what more can a man pray for!” And they still heard Mrs. Winnie singing as though she were singing at a harvest-home.