"I don't know," she answered. "My poor child!" he said. "My poor child!" And then there was a pause which seemed to hold a lifetime of utter silence. It was Bertha who ended it. She stirred a little, and then lifted her face. She looked as he remembered her looking when he had first known her, only that she was paler, and there was a wearied softness in her eyes. She made no attempt at hiding the traces of tears in them, and she spoke as simply as a child. "I thought it was the doctor, when I heard the horse's feet," she said; "and I was afraid the dogs would bark and waken Janey. She has just fallen asleep, and she has slept so little. She has been very ill." "_You_ have not slept," he said. "No," she replied. "This is the first time I have left her." He took her hand and drew it gently through his arm. "I will take you up to the house," he said, "so that you can hear every sound; but you must stay outside for a little while. The fresh air will do you good, and we can walk up and down while I tell you the reason the professor did not come." All the ordinary conventional barriers had fallen away from between them. He did not know why or how, and he did not ask. Suddenly he found himself once again side by side with the Bertha he had fancied lost forever. All that had bewildered him was gone. The brilliant little figure, with its tinkling ornaments, the unemotional little smile, the light laugh, were only parts of a feverish dream. It was Bertha whose hand rested on his arm--whose fair, young face was pale with watching over her child--whose soft voice was tremulous and tender with innocent, natural tears. She spoke very little. When they had walked to and fro before the house for a short time, she said: "Let us go and sit down on the steps of the porch," and they went and sat there together,--he upon a lower step, and she a few steps above, her hands clasped on her knee, her face turned half away from him. She rarely looked at him, he noticed, even when he spoke to her or she spoke to him; her eyes rested oftener than not upon some far-away point under the trees. "You are no better than you were when you went away," he said, looking at her cheek where the moonlight whitened it. "No," she answered. "I did not think to find you looking like this," he said. "Perhaps," she said, still with her eyes fixed on the far-away shadows, "perhaps I have not had time enough. You must give me time." "You have had two months," he returned. "Two months," she said, "is not so long as it seems." And between the words there came a curious little catch of the breath. "It has seemed long to you?" he asked. "Yes." She turned her face slowly and looked at him. "Has it seemed long to you?" she said. "Yes," he replied, "long and dreary." She swayed a little toward him with a sort of unconscious movement; her eyes were fixed upon his face with a wistful questioning; he had seen her look at her children so.