The
light that she had not seen in his eyes for so long rose in them--the
old, unfathomable, infolding tenderness. A quiver ran around his tense
nostrils.
And now one little phrase which he had uttered so sacredly years
before and had long since forgotten rose a second time to his
lips--tossed there by a second tide of feeling. On the silence of the
room fell his words:
"_Bride of the Mistletoe!_"
The storm that had broken over him died away. He shut his eyes on the
vanishing scene: he opened them upon her.
He had told her the truth about the story; he may have been aware or
he may not have been aware that he had revealed to her the truth about
himself.
"This is what I would have kept from you, Josephine," he said quietly.
She was sitting there before him--the mother of his children, of the
sleeping ones, of the buried ones--the butterfly broken on the wheel
of years: lustreless and useless now in its summer.
She sat there with the whiteness of death.
V. THE ROOM OF THE SILENCES
The Christmas candles looked at her flickeringly; the little white
candles of purity, the little red candles of love. The holly in the
room concealed its bold gay berries behind its thorns, and the cedar
from the faithful tree beside the house wall had need now of its
bitter rosary.
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