“Nothing, nothing at all; we haven’t started yet.” He put one arm around her, and with the other lifted her face up toward his. “I only came back to tell you—“His voice broke; there seemed to be a mist over the eyes that were bent on hers. “I can’t talk. I can’t be as I ought to be, Lois, until all this is over—but—I don’t know what’s getting into me lately, you look so beautiful to me that I can’t take my eyes off you! I went around all to-day counting the hours, like a foolish boy, until it was time to come back to you; I grudge every minute that I spend away from my lovely wife.”% Sometimes we have a happiness so much greater, so much more blessed than our easily imagined bliss that we can only hide our eyes from it at first, like those of old, when in some humble and unthought-of place they were visited by angels. CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE Very late that night Bailey Girard arrived at the house, after an absence of ten days. Dosia had gone to bed unusually early, but she could not sleep. She could not seem to sleep at all lately—the more tired she was the more ceaselessly luminous seemed her brain; it was like trying to sleep in a white glare in which all sorts of trivial things became unnaturally distinct. So many wakeful nights had she passed that one seemed to presuppose another, darkness brought, not a sense of rest, but that dread knowledge that she was going to lie there staring through all the hours of it. Since that night that the pitcher had broken, she was ever waiting tensely for the day to bring her something that it never brought. Lawson’s death—Girard—Billy, who was getting a little troublesome lately—the dear little brothers far away, mixed up with tiny household perplexities, kept going through and through her mind. Her heart was wrung for those two in the house, Justin and Lois; yet they had each other! Dreams could no longer comfort and support Dosia; they had had their day. Prayer but wakened her further, wandering off in desultory thought. If she could only sleep and forget!