There came swift moments in those long and passion-freighted hours when the darkened, distorted vision cleared in wonderful flashes that brought the healing of light. In these moments she caught glimpses of herself, not as this draggled, pain-gripped, hungry creature, the prey of frenzied, torturing moods, but as a wife tenderly beloved, a happy mother of little children, the mistress of comforts that her husband had won for her, the appointed dispenser of blessings; a wife tenderly beloved, the true owner of her husband’s heart, a woman whose work it was to grow daily in strength and grace, that she might be more and more his helper, his lover. Even as this glimpse was shut out again, there was the piercing thought: If that were real, and what her darkened eyes beheld untrue! Things are what they are, no matter how one’s distorted vision sees them. If it were really true, no matter how she saw it now, that she was a wife tenderly beloved, with happiness within her grasp, and a miserable woman indeed only that she was blind to its possibilities! She had said, _The train that gets here at a quarter to one?_ with what a longing for him not to leave her, and he had answered, _Yes, of course_. Nothing could make those words any different. And she wanted him, and he did not care—he did not care. Justin, Justin! The long, long, torturing fangs of self-pity had her by the throat. The house was silent, the children slept, the maids had gone up-stairs. The hours wore on into the night. The footsteps passed up and down the street only at long intervals. The air grew chill in the house. In the quiet, the watcher could hear the trains far, far off across the flats. At twelve o’clock the spring rain began to fall, gently at first, and then in torrents, coming straight down with a rushing sound that blotted out both trains and footsteps. And the train was late, as she had said it would be, it was after one o’clock when Justin ran up the steps with that firm, quick tread of his, opened the door, and came in. His face was bright and eager; he was full yet of the pleasure of the evening, and anxious to make her a sharer of it. He turned to speak to his wife, and the glow on his countenance died out instantly as with a breath from the tomb. Lois sat stiffly upright in a chair, facing him. The light had gone out in the lamp, and the one gas-burner above, with its meager flicker, cast the room into the desolate half-shadows that speak of the late hours of the night. She had worn a scarlet house-gown in the evening; the trailing folds swept the floor around her slippered feet now, her bare arms gleamed below the sleeves that only reached beyond the elbow. Around her was flung a gray cloak, buttoned askew at the throat, and in one of her folded hands she held a black lace scarf. Her face was white, and her large eyes stared straight before her rigidly, yet with a wild gleam in them; as he looked at her she rose and moved as if to pass him.