[Illustration:  “He gazed long and exultingly into the eyes yielded so abjectly to his.”]

“Allan—­Allan!” he repeated dazedly while the look of pain deepened in the woman’s eyes.  He stared back at her dumbly.  Then another awakening became visible in him and he laughed awkwardly.

“It’s funny, Nance—­funny—­and awful!  Do you know that not until I spoke his name then had a thought of Allan come to me?  Can you comprehend it?  I can’t now.  But it’s the truth.  I woke up too suddenly.  Allan—­Allan—.”  It sounded as if he were trying to recall some forgotten personality.  “Oh, Allan!”

The last was more like a cry.  He fell into the chair by which he had stood.  And now the woman erected herself, coming forward to stand before him, her head bowed, her hands convulsively interlocked.

“Do you see it all, Bernal?  Is it plain now?  Oh, how it tortured me—­that last Gratcher—­the one we make in our own image and yet make to be perfect.  It never hurt me before, but now I know why.  It couldn’t hurt me so long as I looked it straight in the eye—­but just now my eyes had to fall before it, and all in a second it was tearing me to pieces.  That’s the only defense against this last Gratcher, Bernal, to look it in the eyes unafraid.  And oh, it hurts so—­and it’s all my own miserable fault!”

“No, it’s your goodness, Nance.”  He spoke very quietly now.  “Only the good have a Gratcher that can’t be laughed away.  My own was late in coming.  Your Gratcher has saved us.”

He stood up and took her unresisting hands in both his own.  They rested there in peace, yielding themselves like tired children to caring arms.

“Now I shall be healed,” she said.

“It will take me longer, Nance.  My hurt is more stubborn, more complicated.  I can’t help it.  Something in me resists.  I see now that I know too much—­too much of you, too much of—­”

She saw that he must have suffered some illumination upon Allan.  There was a look of bitter comprehension in his face as he broke off.  She turned away from it.

When, an hour later, Allan came in, he found them chatting easily of the few people of St. Antipas that Bernal had met.  At the moment, they were discussing Mrs. Wyeth, whose face, Bernal declared, was of a rare perfection.  Nance turned to her husband.

“You must thank Bernal,” she said, “for entertaining your guests this afternoon.”

“He wouldn’t if he knew what I said—­or how it must have bored them.  One thing, Nance, they won’t meet here again until you swear I’ve gone!”

“Bernal’s heart is right, even if his theology doesn’t always please me,” said his brother graciously, examining some cards that lay on the table.  “I see Mrs. Wyeth has called,” he continued to Nancy, looking up from these.

“Yes.  She wanted me to see her sister, poor Mrs. Eversley, who is ill at her house.  I promised to look in to-morrow.”