When the children of Amalon came to play with her, the little Nephis, Moronis, Lehis, and Juabs, he saw she was a creature apart from them, of another fashion of mind and body.  He saw, too, that with some native intuition she seemed to divine this, and to assume command even of those older than herself.  Thus Wish Wright and his brother, Welcome, both her seniors by several years, were her awe-bound slaves; and the twin daughters of Zebedee Bloom obeyed her least whim without question, even when it involved them in situations more or less delicate.  With her quick ear for rhythm she had been at once impressed by their names—­impressed to a degree that savoured of fascination.  She would seat the two before her, range the other children beside them, and then lead the chorus in a spirited chant of these names:—­

  “Isa Vinda Exene Bloom! 
   Ella Minda Almarine Bloom!”

repeating this a long time until they were all breathless, and the solemn twins themselves were looking embarrassed and rather foolishly pleased.

As he observed her day by day in her joyous growth, it was inevitable that he came more and more to observe the woman who was caring for her, and it was thus on one night in late summer that he awoke to an awful truth,—­a truth that brought back the words of the woman’s former husband with a new meaning.

He had heard Prudence say to her, “You are a pretty mamma,” and suddenly there came rushing upon him the sum of all the impressions his eyes had taken of her since that day when the Bishop had spoken.  He trembled and became weak under the assault, feeling that in some insidious way his strength had been undermined.  He went out into the early evening to be alone, but she, presently, having put the child to bed, came and stood near, silently in the doorway.

He looked and saw she was indeed made new, restored to the lustre and fulness of her young womanhood.  He remembered then that she had long been silent when he came near her, plainly conscious of his presence but with an apparent constraint, with something almost tentative in her manner.  With her return to health and comeliness there had come back to her a thousand little graces of dress and manner and speech.  She drew him, with his starved love of beauty and his need of companionship; drew him with a mighty power, and he knew it at last.  He remembered how he had felt and faintly thrilled under a certain soft suppression in her tones when she had spoken to him of late; this had drawn him, and the new light in her eyes and her whole freshened womanhood, even before he knew it.  Now that he did know it he felt himself shaken and all but lost; clutching weakly at some support that threatened every moment to give way.

And she was his wife, his who had starved year after year for the light touch of a woman’s hand and the tones of her voice that should be for him alone.  He knew now that he had ached and sickened in his yearning for this, and she stood there for him in the soft night.  He knew she was waiting, and he knew he desired above all things else to go to her; that the comfort of her, his to take, would give him new life, new desires, new powers; that with her he would revive as she had done.  He waited long, indulging freely in hesitation, bathing his wearied soul in her nearness—­yielding in fancy.