Theron turned over in his mind the project of offering to help her, as he had done so often in those dear old days when they laughingly began life together.  Something decided this project in the negative for him, and after lingering moments he put on his hat and went out for a walk.

Not even the most doleful and trying hour of his bitter experience in Tyre had depressed him like this.  Looking back upon these past troubles, he persuaded himself that he had borne them all with a light and cheerful heart, simply because Alice had been one with him in every thought and emotion.  How perfect, how ideally complete, their sympathy had always been!  With what absolute unity of mind and soul they had trod that difficult path together!  And now—­henceforth—­was it to be different?  The mere suggestion of such a thing chilled his veins.  He said aloud to himself as he walked that life would be an intolerable curse if Alice were to cease sharing it with him in every conceivable phase.

He had made his way out of town, and tramped along the country hill-road for a considerable distance, before a merciful light began to lessen the shadows in the picture of gloom with which his mind tortured itself.  All at once he stopped short, lifted his head, and looked about him.  The broad valley lay warm and tranquil in the May sunshine at his feet.  In the thicket up the side-hill above him a gray squirrel was chattering shrilly, and the birds sang in a tireless choral confusion.  Theron smiled, and drew a long breath.  The gay clamor of the woodland songsters, the placid radiance of the landscape, were suddenly taken in and made a part of his new mood.  He listened, smiled once more, and then started in a leisurely way back toward Octavius.

How could he have been so ridiculous as to fancy that Alice—­his Alice—­had been changed into someone else?  He marvelled now at his own perverse folly.  She was overworked—­tired out—­that was all.  The task of moving in, of setting the new household to rights, had been too much for her.  She must have a rest.  They must get in a hired girl.

Once this decision about a servant fixed itself in the young minister’s mind, it drove out the last vestage of discomfort.  He strode along now in great content, revolving idly a dozen different plans for gilding and beautifying this new life of leisure into which his sanguine thoughts projected Alice.  One of these particularly pleased him, and waxed in definiteness as he turned it over and over.  He would get another piano for her, in place of that which had been sacrificed in Tyre.  That beneficient modern invention, the instalment plan, made this quite feasible—­so easy, in fact, that it almost seemed as if he should find his wife playing on the new instrument when he got home.  He would stop in at the music store and see about it that very day.