She had tucked up the silken skirt of her gown and was deftly measuring out coffee—after the swift, preliminary shaking of the fire with which every woman takes possession of a kitchen—pouring the water into the coffee-pot from the steaming kettle, and then vibrating between the kitchen closet and the butler’s pantry with the quick, capable movements of one who knows her ground thoroughly. “Really, it isn’t any trouble. Margaret leaves half of the things ready, you know. If you’ll just lift down that dish of salad for me—and the cold chicken is beside it. I hate to ask you to get up, but—Thank you. How good the coffee smells! I know you always like the coffee I make.”

“You bet I do,” said Mr. Belmore with fervour. “Say, petty, you don’t think you could come out now and take a look at the garden? I’m almost sure the peas are beginning to show.”

“No; I’m afraid there isn’t time. We’ll have to give it up for this Sunday.” She paused for a great effort. “If you’d like to go by yourself, dear—”

“Wouldn’t you mind?”

She paused again, looking at him with her clear-eyed seriousness.

“I don’t think I mind now, but I might—afterward.”

If he had hesitated, it was for a hardly appreciable second. “And I don’t want to go,” he protested stoutly; “it wouldn’t be the same thing at all without you.”

“Everything is ready now,” said his wife. “Though I do hate to disturb Edith and Alan. I’ll just run up and hear the children say their prayers before I put those things on the table. If you would just take a look at the furnace”—it was the sentence Mr. Belmore had been dreading—“and then you come up and kiss the children good-night.”

Mr. Belmore, on his way up from stoking, caught a glimpse projected from the parlour mirror through an aperture in the doorway which the portières had left uncovered. The reflection was of a girl, with tear- stained face and closed eyes, her head upon a young man’s shoulder, while his lips were touchingly pressed to her hair. The picture might have been called “After the Storm,” the wreckage was so plainly apparent. As Mr. Belmore turned after ascending the flight of stairs he came full in sight of another picture, spread out to view in the room at the end of the hall. He stood unseen in the shadow regarding it.

His wife sat in a low chair near one of the two white beds; little Dorothy’s crib was in their room beyond. The three children were perched on the foot of the nearest bed, white-gowned, with rosy faces and neatly brushed hair. While he looked, the youngest child gave a birdlike flutter and jump, and lighted on the floor, falling on her knees, with her bowed head in the mother’s lap, her hands upraised. As she finished the murmured prayer, helped by the tender mother voice, she rose and stood to one side, in infantine seriousness, while the next one spread her white plumes for the same flight, waiting afterward in reverent line with the first as the third hovered down.

It was plain to see from the mother’s face that she had striven to put all earthly thoughts aside in the performance of this sacred office of ministering to innocence; her eyes must be holy when her children’s looked up at her on their way to God.

This was the little inner chapel, the Sanctuary of Home, where she was priestess by Divine right. It would have been an indifferent man, indeed, who had not fallen upon his knees in spirit, in company with this little household of faith, in mute recognition of the love and peace and order that crowned his days.