Involuntarily he shut his eyes, the faintest line was pencilled between his brows. Pain struck home again through all that serenity of light. If there was one thing Henry Collinton, the man, loved, it was reserve, the delicate stateliness of their mutual sympathy. Yet here was the nakedness of a woman’s soul! Words seemed to him too far away to find or utter. “Henry, sometimes you seem to me to see only God!” Still he sat before her, silent and motionless as a portrait statue, as austere and beautiful. His face was in profile to her. The firelight fell on his silver-white hair and filled the eyes that did not turn or see her. Still she seemed to him changed into a stranger. But her words sounded in his head, “Sometimes you seem to see only God!” The Bishop put up his right hand to his brow, suddenly veiling his face from her. Against the strange recoil from her his quick prayer throbbed. So long Lucy gazed at that corded old hand that shut him from her that there grew at last on her face also, a marble sternness that matched his own. She was no longer beautiful beneath that blighting cynicism. Behind his lifted hand, the Bishop did not guess his testing, alone with God as he sat there, praying against this quivering repulsion of his soul. At last Lucy’s eyes turned from him to the fire. The smile of a faint scorn caught on her lips! Scorn for herself? Scorn for him? Sixty years of loving? Was this its issue? Silence, except for the whispering fire. The Bishop dropped his hand, leaning back a moment in uttermost relief. From head to foot, he felt, all quietly, some stern tension relaxed, and with it there passed away also something of that intensely clear vision he had just experienced. Looking now toward that other chair by the fire, he knew it was no stranger but the old familiar Lucy seated there, his friend, and how tired she looked and white and lonely! He must try to understand. It was very strange to realize it all, but step by step he must try to understand, even though he felt again now suddenly, and far more certainly, the shutting in upon him of the vagueness and dullness of the morning hours. He cried out to the Friend to hold it at bay a little while that he might talk to Lucy. He smiled over to her sunnily. As she looked into his eyes that blighting scorn was transformed into a tremulous new beauty, her brooding face suddenly puckered with the painful tears of age. “Henry, tell me how to live without you! Give it to me this Christmas Day, that gift of hope!”