was so honest and true, yet so thoroughly prosaic and commonplace. "What a sermon you have been preaching me, sitting here so uncomplainingly."
"Do you think so?" she said, looking up gratefully."I am glad. I so want to do my duty by you."
He had meant to kiss her as he bent over her, though such caresses were rare between them, but there was something in her tones that chilled him, and he merely raised a tress of her hair to his lips instead. At the door he bade her a pleasant farewell, but his countenance grew sorrowful as he went down the path.
"Duty," he murmured, "always duty, never love. Well, the fault is my own that we were ever married.God help me to be true and kind to her always. She shall never know that I miss anything in her."
And he preached to his congregation that afternoon a sermon on burden-bearing, showing how each should bear his own burden patiently, — not darkening the lives of others by complaint, but always saying loving words, no matter how much of heartache lay beneath them. He told how near God is to us all, ready to heal and to strengthen; and closed by showing how sweet and beautiful even a common life may vgrow through brave and self-sacrificing endurance of trouble.
It was a helpful sermon, a sermon that brought the listeners nearer God. More than one heart was touched by those earnest words that seemed to breathe divine sympathy and compassion.
He went home feeling more at peace than he had done for many days. His wife's room was still, as he
