"You have not been a wife, Claudia, and therefore there are some things you do not know," pursued the voice. "A wife becomes in time to her husband such a part of himself (that is, if he loves her) that she isn't a separate person to him any more, and he hardly thinks of her as one; she is himself. Many things become a matter of course to him--are taken for granted--on this very account. It does not occur to him that she may feel differently. He supposes that they feel alike. Often they do. Still, a woman's thoughts do not always run in the same channel as those of a man; we are more timid, more limited, more--afraid of things, you know; but the husband does not always remember that. But there are some things in which a husband and wife do feel alike, always and forever; there are ties which are eternal. And my own life holds them--ties and memories so precious that I can hardly explain them to you; memories of those early years of ours when we were so alone and poor, but so dear to each other that we did not mind it. We love each other just the same; but then we had nothing but our love--and it was enough. The coming, the short stay with us, and the fading away of our two little children, Claudia--these are ties deep down in our hearts which nothing can ever sunder. Stephen will go back to all that old grief of his when he comes home to find the little boy gone. For the greatest sorrow of his life, one he has never at heart overcome, was that he felt when we lost our own little boy. Stephen had loved the child passionately, and would not believe that he must go; and when he did he bowed his head in a silence so long that I was frightened. I had never seen him give up before. But even that is a dear tie between us, for then he had only me. Those early years of ours, with their joys and sorrows--I often think of them. A man does not dwell upon such memories, one by one, as a woman does. But they are none the less there, a part of his life and of him." She stopped. "Do not mind," she added, in a changed voice. "I am only--a little tired, I think." Claudia, who had not moved, turned quickly. Mrs. Lenox's eyes were closed; she was very pale. But she did not faint; owing to Claudia's quick, efficient help, she was soon herself again. "You know what to do, don't you?" she said, smiling, when the faint feeling had passed. "It is not that I know, so much as that I long to help you," answered Claudia. "I wish you would let me unbraid your hair, and make you ready for bed; you look so tired, and perhaps I could do it with a lighter touch than Bianca," she added, humbly. "Very well," said the other, assentingly.