And she was his wife, his who had starved year after year for the light touch of a woman’s hand and the tones of her voice that should be for him alone. He knew now that he had ached and sickened in his yearning for this, and she stood there for him in the soft night. He knew she was waiting, and he knew he desired above all things else to go to her; that the comfort of her, his to take, would give him new life, new desires, new powers; that with her he would revive as she had done. He waited long, indulging freely in hesitation, bathing his wearied soul in her nearness—yielding in fancy. Then he walked off into the night, down through the village, past the light of open doors, and through the voices that sounded from them, out on to the bare bench of the mountain—his old refuge in temptation—where he could be safe from submitting to what his soul had forbidden. He had meant to take up a cross, but before his very eyes it had changed to be a snare set for him by the Devil. He stayed late on the ground in the darkness, winning the battle for himself over and over, decisively, he thought, at the last. But when he went home she was there in the doorway to meet him, still silent, but with eyes that told more than he dared to hear. He thought she had in some way divined his struggle, and was waiting to strengthen the odds against him, with her face in the light of a candle she held above her head. He went by her without speaking, afraid of his weakness, and rushed to his little cell-like room to fight the battle over. As a last source of strength he took from its hiding-place the little Bible. And as it fell open naturally at the blood-washed page a new thing came, a new torture. No sooner had his eyes fallen on the stain than it seemed to him to cry out of itself, so that he started back from it. He shut the book and the cries were stilled; he opened it and again he heard them—far, loud cries and low groans close to his ear; then long piercing screams stifled suddenly too low, horrible gurglings. And before him came the inscrutable face with the deep gray eyes and the shining lips, lifting, with love in the eyes, above a gashed throat. He closed the book and fell weakly to his knees to pray brokenly, and almost despairingly: “Help me to keep down this self within me; let it ask for nothing; fan the fires until they consume it! _Bow me, bend me, break me, burn me out—burn me out_!” In the morning, when he said, “Martha, the harvest is over now, and I want you to go north with me,” she prepared to obey without question.