The Bishop wondered why people say that one grows used to loss, and that old age grows dull in feeling. Still he had got used to it, of course. This was Christmas, too; it was quite natural that he should feel it more on Christmas. He must be a little patient then with himself about it, perhaps, on Christmas. Yet when had there been a day when he had not missed them, his own! The Bishop turned toward the eastward window, and on his gray and beautiful face fell the gray and beautiful morning, for the Bishop was one who had made God a habit, so that he turned to Him instinctively without thinking about it at all. And since also he was a man of quick visual imagination he thought of God quite simply: he saw Him standing there, between the bed and the brightening window, in the form of a young Jewish rabbi. He always stood there, to greet the Bishop’s day. Together they always went about, step matching step, so that the Bishop was never a lonely man. To himself he always thought of the Nazarene as the Friend, because, so he thought, it was by loneliness that Jesus had learned how to love. Since the Bishop always thought in words and in pictures, it seemed to him that the Friend said to him now, “Rise. Let us go forth into the morning. It is Christmas. It is the day of giving.” While he dressed, the Bishop still knew God standing there, but felt rather than seen, being lost sometimes in mist and dizziness. The spaces in the room were strange; it was a very long journey to the washstand, and the white window squares seemed to advance and then recede. The Bishop could see his brush plainly enough on the bureau scarf, but it was a long time before he could make his hand reach it. He had to smile quaintly at himself at last, for he was sitting on the bed mechanically counting the flower baskets in the worn Brussels carpet, flower baskets that ran diagonally to the chair holding his coat. Groping a little, the Bishop achieved the coat, then stood trembling. Undoubtedly he was ill that morning, but Mrs. Graham should not know it! For he must go out, he must go to church, there was no service in all the year so dear to him as the Christmas communion at St. John’s. He would force his blurring head to go through with it, and Mrs. Graham should not keep him in! Keep him in! A frown twitched on his forehead, an old man’s helplessness at the thought of coddling. Why should a woman he had known but three years be so solicitous over his health, dictating about his rubbers and his socks--he was not ill, nor was he so very old! At that his brow cleared in a sunny flash of amusement, for of course, he was very old, eighty-one, and besides Mrs. Graham was very good to him. Still to-day she must not keep him at home, for to stand once more within the rail offering the chalice to his people had become a deep and blind desire, overmastering all sense of weakness. Besides, there were other matters and grave ones to be seen to, to-day.