though she heard him silently express his disapproval. But, since the day when, years ago, she had yielded to her husband and consented to the superhuman sacrifice of surrendering her son to the woman whom that son had plunged into unhappiness—because this sacrifice was the duty which was required of her by divine and human equity—since that time she had had no peace, read as she might in her Bible, talk as she would with the minister, pray as she did for hours on end. She had had no peace: deep down in herself she had always borne a grudge because Heaven had laid so heavy a sacrifice upon her, the mother. Her husband had had the strength of a man who pursues the straight path, the path of duty, and he had surrenderd his son and lost him without a superfluous word. But she, though she also spoke no word, had not resigned herself; and her soul had rebelled; and she had thought that she was lost for all eternity . . . until a gentle ray had come, by accident, to comfort her out of the strange book which, by accident, she had taken up and opened. And, still a believer, though she no longer went to church and though, in her heart, she did not agree with the minister, did not agree with her old husband, she nevertheless endeavoured to unite, to reconcile, to blend what remained of the old faith, which had once stood firm as a rock, with the new faith; and, when she prayed, she prayed indeed to the same God of her old, former faith, but she listened also to the voices, to that part of the invisible world which hovers around us and saves us and
