Aftermath / Part second of A Kentucky Cardinal""

rings to the worshipful spirit of my hearth-stone. There should have been several of these offerings already, for October is

adow and listening to the cawing of crows under the low gray of the sky as they hurried home.

fire together," I said, s

her we started the blaze. I had drawn Georgiana's chair to one side of the fireplace, mine opposite; and with th

world; and later they became in-wrought with the pursuit and enjoyment of things that had been the delight of my life for many years. So that coming now, at the very moment when I was dedicating myself to my hearth-stone and to domestic life, this smell of wood smoke reached me like a message from my past. For an instant ungovernable longings surged over me to return to it. For an instant I did return; and once more I lay drowsing before my old camp-fire

I could see that if there were any flight of her mind away from the present it was into the future-a slow, tranquil flight across the years, with all the happiness that they must bring. As I set my own thoughts to journey after hers, suddenly the scen

finest of tree calf! It is a dishonor to speak of him as a work. He was a doctor of philosophy! He should have been a college professor! Think how he could have used his own feet for a series of lectures on the laws of equilibrium, capillary attraction, or soils and moisture! Was there ever a head that knew as much as his about the action of light? Did any human being ever more grandly bear the burdens of life or better face the tempests of the world? What did he no

e been I do not know, for at tha

ire," she said, volubly, "and ran over to g

n formally introduced to this room, and a formal introduction is necessary. You must be made acquainted with the primary law of

e burnt into the bricks. We expect to ask that all our guests will kindly notice this inscription, in order to av

the following legend, running

ound these hear

ord of an

rds me with inst

here!" she cried. "I'm

sson about their talkin

tand it is

wl before a looking-glass

id, gently. "You came very near

Georgiana, fondling our neighbor's hand

ight. Our guests have only to intimate that they can no longer restrain their propensities and we will conduct them to another chamber. Mrs. Moss and I will occasionally make use of these chambers ourselves, to relieve the tension of too much virtue. But it is seriousl

began to speak, but, with a frightened look at the fireplace, dropped into a cough, or cleared her thr

ard check would call for the least inner restraint; nevertheless, on what a footing of confidence it placed our conversation! To what a commanding level we were safely lifted!

at she can as easily fill a room. Our bodies were grouped about the fireplace; our minds

alked a long time to Georgi

t, have pressed upon us elsewhere, when we enter there we enter peace. We shall be walled in, from all darkness of whatsoever meaning; our better selves will be the sole guests of those luminous hours. And surely no great

rm in her which I pursue, yet never overtake, is part and parcel of that ungraspable beauty of the world which forever foils the sense while it sways the spirit-of that elusive, infinite splendor of God which flows from afar into all ter

imes she will seek me out and, sitting beside me, put her arm around my neck and look long into my eyes, full of a sort of beautiful, divine wonder at what I am, at what love is, at what it means for a man and a woman to live together as we live. Yet, folded to me thus, she also craves a still larger fulfilme

oon has reached its fulness and t

. Sometimes I lie awake for the sole chance of seeing them float upon her hair, pass lingeringly across her face, and steal holily downward along her

part of the bed remained in deep shadow, I could see that the th

d received a wound in one of her feet-how serious I had never known, but perhaps deforming, irremediable. My head w

ace away and