One evening after his usual hour of study, Mr. Thorpe laid aside his books and went in search of his wife. She was indisposed and had kept her room during the day. He found her noiselessly walking back and forth through the room, with her hands pressed close against her temples. She wore a loose gown, which fell in long folds about her, and revealed her tall and ghost-like in the dim light. Mr. Thorpe stood for a moment and regarded her in silence. Her face was haggard, and her eyes were set in dark circles. Her movements were slow and mechanical, as though her body was a thing apart from the spirit which impelled it. Her whole attitude and appearance suggested the embodiment of an overmastering pain.
Mr. Thorpe stepped to her side. "Evelyn, my dear," he said, "you are in great pain. Why did you not call me? You should have help; direct me and I will bring you some remedy."
"I have tried many remedies," she said. "I do not believe anything will relieve me. A headache has to have its own time."
She assured her husband that there was nothing that he could do to relieve her, and begged him to retire and leave her alone.
In the small hours of the night she crept to her bed, pale and worn, like some wounded thing that has been engaged in deadly combat with a foe. The pain had burned itself out, and the sleep of exhaustion came to her.
The severity of his wife's attacks alarmed Mr. Thorpe, and he begged her to lay down still more of the burden of her work. But she was not ready to do this, and continued her self-appointed tasks with all the strength at her command. Yet there was something in look and manner, something indescribable, unlike her real self, that caused Mr. Thorpe a vague feeling of apprehension for the future.
It was at this time that Mr. Thorpe's cousin, Pauline, came to make her home at the parsonage. She was a middle-aged woman, strong and vigorous and possessed of a goodly share of common sense and plain practicality. Having missed making a home for herself, she very sensibly made herself at home wherever she was.
"I love the Lord with all my heart," she was wont to say, "and I can work for him quite as well in one place as in another."
There was something in her strong and wholesome personality that caused one to trust her instinctively. And gradually, as Mrs. Thorpe was obliged to lay them down, she assumed the household cares; and cheerfully from day to day she took upon herself the burden of the work, and managed the girl in the kitchen with more tact and discretion than Mrs. Thorpe had ever been able to command.
"I do not believe that life holds any problems for Pauline," was Mrs. Thorpe's mental comment, "or that she has any doubts or fears with which to contend."