His adoring gaze, which held the spirit of beauty as a crystal holds the spirit of light, passed from the glowing features of Virginia to the lined and pallid face of his wife. In that gaze there had been no shadow of alteration for thirty years. It is doubtful even if he had seen any change in her since he had first looked upon her face, and thought it almost unearthly in its angelic fairness. From the physical union they had entered into that deeper union of souls in which the body dissolves as the shadow dissolves into the substance, and he saw her always as she had appeared to him on that first morning, as if the pool of sunlight in which she had stood had never darkened around her. Yet to Virginia his words brought a startled realization that her mother--her own mother, with her faded face and her soft, anxious eyes--had once been as young and radiant as she. The love of her parents for each other had always seemed to her as natural and as far removed from the cloudless zone of romance as her own love for them--for, like most young creatures, she regarded love as belonging, with bright eyes and rosy cheeks, to the blissful period of youth. "I hear John Henry's ring, darling. Are you ready?" asked Mrs. Pendleton. "In a minute. Is the rose right in my hair?" replied Virginia, turning her profile towards her mother, while she flung a misty white scarf over her shoulders. "Quite right, dear. I hope you will have a lovely time. I shall sit up for you, so you needn't bother to take a key." "But you'll be so tired. Can't you make her go to bed, father?" "I couldn't close my eyes till I knew you were safely home, and heard how you'd enjoyed yourself," answered Mrs. Pendleton, as they slowly descended the staircase, Virginia leading the way, and the rest following in a procession behind her. Turning at the gate, with her arm in John Henry's, the girl saw them standing in the lighted doorway, with their tender gaze following her, and the faces of the little seamstress and the two coloured servants staring over their shoulders. Trivial as the incident was, it was one of the moments which stood out afterwards in Virginia's memory as though a white light had fallen across it. Of such simple and expressive things life is woven, though the years had not taught her this on that May evening.