Henry rose.  “I’d admire to get the corn,” said he, and went around the house towards the kitchen.  Left to herself, Sylvia let her work fall in her lap.  She stared at the front yard and the street beyond and the opposite house, dimly seen between waving boughs, and her face was the face of despair.  Little, commonplace, elderly countenance that it seemed, it was strengthened into tragedy by the terrible stress of some concealed misery of the spirit.  Sylvia sat very stiffly, so stiffly that even the work in her lap, a mass of soft muslin, might have been marble, with its immovable folds.  Sylvia herself looked petrified; not a muscle of her face stirred.  She was suffering the keenest agony upon earth, that agony of the spirit which strikes it dumb.

She had borne it for months.  She had never let slip the slightest hint of it.  At times she had managed to quiet it with what she knew to be sophistries.  She had been able to imagine herself almost happy with Rose and the new passion for her which had come into her life, but that passion was overgrown by her secret, like some hideous parasite.  Even the girl’s face, which was so beloved, was not to be seen without a pang to follow upon the happiness.  Sylvia showed, however, in spite of her face of utter despair, an odd strength, a courage as if for battle.

After awhile she heard Henry’s returning footsteps, and immediately her face and whole body relaxed.  She became flesh, and took up her needlework, and Henry found her sewing placidly.  The change had been marvellous.  Once more Sylvia was a little, commonplace, elderly woman at her commonplace task.  Even that subtle expression which at times so puzzled Henry had disappeared.  The man had a sensation of relief as he resumed his seat on the stone step.  He was very patient with Sylvia.  It was his nature to be patient with all women.  Without realizing it, he had a tenderness for them which verged on contempt.  He loved Sylvia, but he never lost sight of the fact that she was a woman and he a man, and therefore it followed, as a matter of course, that she was by nature weaker and, because of the weakness, had a sweet inferiority.  It had never detracted from his love for her; it had increased it.  There might not have been any love in the beginning except for that.

Henry was perhaps scarcely capable of loving a woman whom he might be compelled to acknowledge as his superior.  This elderly New-Englander had in him none of the spirit of knight-errantry.  He had been a good, faithful husband to his wife, but he had never set her on a pedestal, but a trifle below him, and he had loved her there and been patient with her.

But patience must breed a certain sense of superiority.  That is inevitable.  Henry’s tender patience with Sylvia’s moods and unreason made him see over her character, as he could see over her physical head.  Lately this sense of mystery had increased, in a way, his comprehension of his own stature.  The more mysterious Sylvia became, and the more Henry’s patience was called into action, the taller he appeared to himself to become.