One evening he came in to sit by her,—her convalescence had been a long and dragging one,—and she had paused in the midst of telling him something to await an answer. None came. She spoke again, and raised herself to look. Then she saw that even within that brief space he had fallen asleep, as a man may who is thoroughly exhausted. Thoroughly exhausted! Everything proclaimed it—his attitude, grimly grotesque in the dim light, one leg stretched out half in front of the other, as he had dropped into the seat, his relaxed arms hanging down, his head resting sidewise against the back of the chair, with the face sharply upturned. The shadows lay in the hollows under his cheek-bones and in those lines that marked his temples. Divested of color and the transforming play of expression, he looked strangely old, terribly lifeless. He slept without moving,—almost, it seemed, without breathing,—while Lois, with a new dread, watched him with frightened, dilated, fascinated eyes. How had he grown like this? What unnoticed change had been at work? She called him again, but he did not hear; she stretched out her arm, but he was just beyond reach. Suddenly it seemed to her that he was dead, and that she could never reach him again; an icy hand seemed to have been laid on her heart. What if never, never, never—— Just then he opened his eyes and sat up, saying naturally, “Did you speak?” “Oh, you frightened me so! Don’t go to sleep like that again,” said Lois, with a shaking voice. “Come here.” He came and knelt down by her, and she pressed his cheek close to hers with a rush of painful emotion. “Why, you mustn’t get worked up over a little thing like that,” he objected lightly, going out of the room afterwards with a reassuring smile at her, while she gazed after him with strangely awakened eyes. For the first time in months, she thought of him without any idea of benefit to herself. The next day the neighbor sent her over the book; the title arrested her attention oddly—“The Woman’s Kingdom.” Another phrase correlated with it in her memory—“Queen of the Home.” The home was supposed to be woman’s domain, where she was the sovereign power; there she was helper, sustainer, director, the dear dispenser of favors. _The Woman’s Kingdom, Queen of the Home._ Gradually the words drew her down long lanes of retrospect, led by the rose-leaf touch of the baby’s fingers; _they_ kept her strong. What kingdom had she ever made her own? She poor, bedraggled, complaining suppliant, a beggar where she should have been a queen! Home and the heart of her husband—there lay her woman’s kingdom, her realm, her God-given province. She had had the ordering of it, none other; she had married a good man. Glad or sorry, that kingdom was as her rule made it; she must be judged by her government—as she was queen enough to hold it. She fell asleep that day thinking of the words.