THE SMOKE.

  Lord, I have laid my heart upon Thy altar,
    But can not get the wood to burn;
  It hardly flares ere it begins to falter,
    And to the dark return.

  Old sap, or night-fallen dew, has damped the fuel;
    In vain my breath would flame provoke;
  Yet see—­at every poor attempt’s renewal
    To Thee ascends the smoke.

  ’Tis all I have—­smoke, failure, foiled endeavor,
    Coldness, and doubt, and palsied lack;
  Such as I have I send Thee;—­perfect Giver,
    Send Thou Thy lightning back.

In the morning, as soon as breakfast was over, Helen’s ponies were brought to the door, she and Juliet got into the carriage, Wingfold jumped up behind, and they returned to Glaston.  Little was said on the way, and Juliet seemed strangely depressed.  They left her at her own door.

“What did that look mean?” said Wingfold to his wife, the moment they were round the corner of Mr. Drew’s shop.

“You saw it then?” returned Helen.  “I did not think you had been so quick.”

“I saw what I could not help taking for relief,” said the curate, “when the maid told her that her husband was not at home.”

They said no more till they reached the rectory, where Helen followed her husband to his study.

“He can’t have turned tyrant already!” she said, resuming the subject of Juliet’s look.  “But she’s afraid of him.”

“It did look like it,” rejoined her husband.  “Oh, Helen, what a hideous thing fear of her husband must be for a woman, who has to spend not her days only in his presence, but her nights by his side!  I do wonder so many women dare to be married.  They would need all to have clean consciences.”

“Or no end of faith in their husbands,” said Helen.  “If ever I come to be afraid of you, it will be because I have done something very wrong indeed.”

“Don’t be too sure of that, Helen,” returned Wingfold.  “There are very decent husbands as husbands go, who are yet unjust, exacting, selfish.  The most devoted of wives are sometimes afraid of the men they yet consider the very models of husbands.  It is a brutal shame that a woman should feel afraid, or even uneasy, instead of safe, beside her husband.”

“You are always on the side of the women, Thomas,” said his wife; “and I love you for it somehow—­I can’t tell why.”

“You make a mistake to begin with, my dear:  you don’t love me because I am on the side of the women, but because I am on the side of the wronged.  If the man happened to be the injured party, and I took the side of the woman, you would be down on me like an avalanche.”

“I dare say.  But there is something more in it.  I don’t think I am altogether mistaken.  You don’t talk like most men.  They have such an ugly way of asserting superiority, and sneering at women!  That you never do, and as a woman I am grateful for it.”

The same afternoon Dorothy Drake paid a visit to Mrs. Faber, and was hardly seated before the feeling that something was wrong arose in her.  Plainly Juliet was suffering—­from some cause she wished to conceal.  Several times she seemed to turn faint, hurriedly fanned herself, and drew a deep breath.  Once she rose hastily and went to the window, as if struggling with some oppression, and returned looking very pale.